The first Doctor Strange film was supposed to have a completely different villain, but Marvel changed it

Dr. Strange made his first appearance in the MCU in the 2016 film Doctor Strange, directed by Scott Derrickson. The film followed neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), who had lost his ability to operate due to a car crash injury. He visits the Kamar Taj, hoping for a cure. This leads to him becoming a Sorcerer, and then the character appears in several Marvel projects that followed.

In Doctor Strange, the villains were the Dark Dimension's Dormammu and Kaecilius, and we saw Dr Strange defeat them at the end of the film. C. Robert Cargill, one of the writers of the film's screenplay, has recently revealed in an interview with The Direct that Doctor Strange was originally intended to feature a completely different villain.

Doctor Strange could've had a different villain

Dormammu became a popular MCU villain after the entity was introduced in the first Dr Strange film, but it wasn't the first villain considered for the film. As C. Robert Cargill said to The Direct,

"Yeah, I mean, specifically, we wanted to have Nightmare be the villain of the first movie. And [Marvel Studios] loved the idea, but they were like, 'That's more of a second movie character.'"

Thus, Derrikson and Cargill could not introduce Nightmare as a villain in the first film. But before the final decision was made, Cargill and Derrikson had discussed a few ways they could make Nightmare a part of the story.

Universal Pictures' "The Black Phone" Los Angeles Premiere - Red Carpet - Source: Getty

As Cargill said,

"But so, what we really wanted to do is… Me and Scott [Derrickson] like playing around with alternate realities and dream logic and things like that. We're big fans of that kind of psychonaut kind of space, going deep in your own dreams and the like. And so, we wrote some stuff for the first film [that] we wanted to try to incorporate in the second film of just that dream world, and Doctor Strange having to do battle with this guy who is the master of dreams, and the reality is his whims. And so, we were playing around with that kind of stuff."

However, Derrickson or Cargill did not get to introduce Nightmare as a villain against Dr. Strange in a second film because they were unfortunately not a part of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). Derrickson was initially part of the film but left the project in 2022 due to creative differences. After that, when the second film was made into a screenplay by Michael Waldron and directed by Sam Raimi, they chose Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, as the film's villain.

Despite not getting to write Nightmare as a villain for Dr. Strange, Cargill hopes the Marvel character gets his time to shine sometime in the future. As he told The Direct,

"And I was not involved in 'Multiverse of Madness.' I hadn't been brought on yet before Scott decided to part ways. But yeah, Nightmare is such a great character, and I hope they get to play around with him someday. I'd love to go back and write a Nightmare script for them."

Doctor Strange and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are streaming on Disney+.