Interview: Jon Spaihts, co-writer, “Doctor Strange”

A Variety interview with Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Passengers) who is co-writer of the new Marvel movie Doctor Strange.

What’s the Marvel experience been like? What was different from your previous experiences?

It was a very open and collaborative process, which I loved. They came to the table without preconceptions — and this was the director Scott Derrickson, who was on board just before I was, and Kevin Feige, the grandmaster of the Marvel cinematic universe, and Steve Broussard, the EP. Four of us sat down and talked for hours about what a “Doctor Strange” story could be, and we were not married from the beginning to telling an origin story or to a particular arch villain, or story arc.

We really threw the doors open to all the possibilities. In the end, we were brought home to the origin story because it’s simply so good, and I do believe it’s the best comic-book origin story there is.

The film is filled with Eastern mysticism, faith, and religion. How much of that was from the comic book and how much from your own research?

It definitely has roots in the comic. The comic, consisting of more than 50 years of material, is all over the map about Eastern mysticism, and sometimes is parodying very dated tropes, and sometimes it’s reaching profundity. We aimed in this film to actually say something meaningful about enlightenment, about transcending the ego, about what it means to break through to a wider understanding.

So I think some of it flowed from Derrickson’s personal beliefs and mine and the philosophical discussions we had in the room as well as notions in the comics or other fiction.

You have a busy year with “Passengers,” too. Were you working on both films at the same time?

The “Passengers” script was much older than [“Doctor Strange”] — the bones of it went much farther back — but the production for the two films did overlap, so I did the outlining of the first draft for [“Doctor Strange”] and then Scott Derrickson, himself a very fine writer, and his writing partner Robert Cargill took over. I went off and made “Passengers,” and then I was able to come back and do some finishing work on “Doctor Strange” at the end of the process.

When you were polishing, was there any overlap or were they two unique trips in their own right?

There were moments of harmony between the two projects, and I felt similar ideas and themes moving through them. But they’re set in such different worlds that I never felt like they were too similar.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Twitter: @jonspaihts.