Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is out this week, and the press machine is in full swing. There have been several interviews, teaser trailers, and information pieces dripping out as we approach the release date. One of the more recent interviews is one that Sam Raimi did with Slash Film. They spoke at length about the second Doctor Strange film along with things that may or may not have influenced how Sam Raimi made the film. Steve Ditko, a Marvel legend, even came up! It's interesting stuff, but one thing particularly interesting was Raimi discussing the inspiration, or lack thereof, for the film's storyline.

That's right, there was no real inspiration from a specific comic book storyline for this one, as it was molded around the MCU's story. That's pretty cool!

"No, that was really the look we were after," Raimi told the outlet, "Everything else really came out of the storylines from the previous Marvel movies, as far as setting us up to where our movie would go. It wasn't about, hey, let's bring in a favorite character because we had so many characters that we had to service that there really was no room for anything else except to recognize what they needed and do them justice."

Though Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness may not have been inspired by any specific storyline, someone else did have a huge impression on the film. At least, speaking from an artist' perspective. I'm talking of course about Steve Ditko. When asked about the impression Ditko's art had on him, Raimi had this to say:

"Tremendous impression. I'd never seen anything like his illustrations for those fantastic worlds, so much scale and scope was put into those illustrations. Sometimes you'd open up a two-page Ditko landscape piece and it was incredible. In fact, if you saw the first 20 minutes of our movie, that universe where the movie starts is really based on what we call the Ditko-verse."

If you haven't read the full interview over on Slash Film I really recommend checking it out. It's really interesting, and Raimi provides some interesting insights into the film. At the very least, it's something to tide you over until Friday, when you can officially see the film.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness will release on Friday, May 6, 2022.

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