Benedict Cumberbatch Says ‘There Is a Lot More to Play’ With Doctor Strange and That He Had to ‘Work Hard’ Not to Have ‘Arrogance’ About Marvel Success

variety.com:

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Benedict Cumberbatch is far from done with playing Doctor Strange. The actor, who is at the Red Sea Film Festival with “We Live in Time” — produced by his company SunnyMarch — called the superhero a “complex man motivated by a need to control everything at any cost.” “I am interested in seeing where these costs take him,” he said. “There is a lot more to play and it’s very exciting.” The actor also briefly touched upon his upcoming film with Wes Anderson, “The Phoenician Scheme,” saying that it was a different experience from their previous collaboration in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” in that “this was just character” instead of stepping into a meta-narrative based on pre-existing literary work.

Of Jay Roach’s “The Roses,” Cumberbatch said the film had “pretty cool ingredients” in “amazing” Olivia Colman and a “great script” by Yorgos Lanthimos’s frequent collaborator Tony McNamara. “We’ll see if it’ll get there but it was a joy to make,” continued the actor on the project, which is a reimagining of Danny DeVito’s 1989 comedy “The War of the Roses” starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. “It was my first time as the lead in a comedy.” Cumberbatch said films like “Doctor Strange” and the offerings within the Marvel Cinematic Universe are “grand gestures.” “When they are really good, they capture the zeitgeist, speak to us and our culture.

They are so much fun to do.” Speaking of Marvel’s capturing of the current moment in culture and politics, the actor said that his “real fear” was not just about the fact the character “was a bit of a misogynist and an arrogant sod” but that the story needed to speak with “the idea of spirituality” at that moment in time. “That was the.