Dr. Strange To Be First Marvel Movie For The Magic Kingdom

Yes everyone's favorite Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange is being developed as a live-action flick by Disney/Marvel. The team of Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer has been tapped for the script chore—these are the same guys who wrote the script for the new Conan movie.

Dr. Strange first appeared in Strange Tales #110 (1963), and was created by Amazing Spider-Man creators, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. As reported on Wikipedia, historian Bradford W. Wright describes Ditko's work in his book Comic Book Nation: Transformation of a Youth Culture; "He [Ditko] contributed some of his most surrealistic work to the comic book and gave it a disorienting, hallucinogenic quality. Dr. Strange's adventures take place in bizarre worlds and twisting dimensions that resembled Salvador Dali paintings. ... Inspired by the pulp-fiction magicians of Stan Lee's childhood as well as by contemporary Beat culture. Dr. Strange remarkably predicted the youth counterculture's fascination with Eastern mysticism and psychedelia. Never among Marvel's more popular or accessible characters, Dr. Strange still found a niche among an audience seeking a challenging alternative to more conventional superhero fare."

For those not familiar with the character, Dr. Steven Strange was a brilliant surgeon. One rainy night while driving home, he lost control of his car and crashed. He suffered terrible injuries to hands, leaving him incapable of using them for delicate surgical work. Desperate to fix his hands, he spent his fortune on operations and treatments—however nothing worked and he wound up loosing everything. Then in one final desperate attempt to cure his hands and get his old life back, he heads to Tibet to see if a monk there known as the Ancient One can help, based on rumors he heard that the Ancient One possessed old world cures that modern medicine didn't posses or know of. This destiny defining moment changed Strange's life forever— leading him down the path to become earth's Sorcerer Supreme.

Dr. Strange has appeared in his own ongoing title (actually several over the years), in the Defenders and Avengers comics and made numerous guest appearances in most of Marvel's mainstay books. In 1978 CBS made a live action TV movie called Dr. Strange, based on the comic character. In 2007, Marvel animation made the straight to DVD animated movie Dr. Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme.

Disney plans for Dr. Strange to hit theaters by the summer of 2012.