'Doctor Strange' Film Updates: Benedict Cumberbatch's Solo Outing in MCU Projected to Open with $55M-$75M; Director Happy Wong is Different from Comic Books

‘Doctor Strange’ is projected to open with $55M-$75M as predicted by tracking boards. Benedict Cumberbatch’s solo outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) may be fall’s biggest opening this year. Meanwhile, director Scott Derrickson admitted that he was happy the character Wong is different from the original Marvel comic books.

According to Deadline, the upcoming action-adventure and fantasy film starring Cumberbatch in the lead role is projected to open with $55M-$75M at the box office as reflected on tracking boards. The film is said to have the largest interest among groups of men under 25 at 19% and men over 25 at 18%. This makes the film one of the biggest openers for the fall season.

Tickets for Derrickson’s film went on sale last October 10, 2016 ahead of the scheduled premiere for November 4.  It is one of Disney’s most highly-anticipated films coming up along with ‘Moana’ and ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’, hitting the big screens on November 23 and December 16, respectively. The studio is currently at the number one spot for highest-earners this year with $2.1 billion.

The upcoming film follows the story of a brilliant yet arrogant neurosurgeon, Stephen Strange, who gets into a car accident that leaves him without the use of hands and eventually ruins his career in medicine. He then decides to travel to Nepal to find a cure eventually training under the Ancient One to become the world’s Master of Mystic Arts.

Joining Cumberbatch in the cast are Chiwetel Ejiofor as Baron Mordo, Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer, Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius, Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Nicodemus West.

Benedict Wong is also set to star as Wong, a drill sergeant to Kamar-Taj. It was previously revealed that Wong’s character will be different from the original Marvel comic books.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Derrickson admitted that he didn’t stick to source material while creating Wong. He said, “My first intention, coming in to do Doctor Strange, was not to include Wong at all… I had two characters, Wong and the Ancient One, both of whom in the comics were pretty bad racial stereotypes. To avoid the stereotypical ‘magical Asian,’ we cast Tilda Swinton [as the Ancient One].”

He continued, “Having done that, having eliminated one of the Asian roles from the source material, I had to bring Wong back in. But, unlike the Ancient One, Wong could be totally reinvented. What we did with him was essentially invert the stereotypes from the comics.”

Derrickson explained, “In the comics, he’s a martial arts-kung fu-sidekick-manservant. In this version, instead of a manservant, he’s a master sorcerer and, instead of a sidekick, he’s Strange’s intellectual mentor, instead of just a kung fu fighter he is kind of like a drill sergeant over this compound (the Ancient One’s Nepal base, Kamar-Taj) and the guardian of the books, the library of this place, where the sorcerers train. It was really fun to build from the comics a new character that was an inversion of what was dated and stereotypical about the character. Then Benedict Wong came in and brought an entirely new dimension to that character. He’s just terrific in the movie.”

‘Doctor Strange’ is an upcoming action-adventure and fantasy film scheduled to be released on November 4, 2016. It is produced by Marvel Studios and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in the United States.