Guillermo Del Toro is directing pretty much every film coming out between now and 2017. We sat down with him recently to talk through all the potential projects on his slate, including The Hobbit, At The Mountains of Madness and 3993 (to read about all those projects click here). He also told us that he's flirting with the possibility of bringing another comic book hero to the screen, in the shape of Marvel's Dr Strange.
Less well known than the likes of Hulk and Iron Man, Dr Strange is a Sorcerer Supreme, who does battle with evil magicians and supernatural foes, while wearing a very silly outfit. He's got a strange, sinister air that would be right up Del Toro's street.
"I talked with Neil Gaiman [about writing it]," he tells us. "I said, that’s an interesting character because you can definitely make him more in the pulpy occult detective/magician mould and formula than was done in the Weird Tales, for example...the idea of a character that really dabbles in the occult in a way that’s not X-Filey, where the supernatural is taken for granted. That’s interesting...But I wouldn't use the suit!"
Comic book geeks will remember, of course, that Dr Strange played quite an important role in Gaiman's Elizabethan twist on the Marvel universe, 1602, making him a good choice of screenwriter for this. Of course, the Hellboy 2 director has a ton of projects on his dance card before he can think about getting to this.
To read his thoughts on The Hobbit, Frankenstein and more, read our exclusive interview here.
To see the first instalment of our exclusive video set visit to Hellboy II, click here.