As the cinema-going public’s thirst for massive superheroic spectacles shows no sign of slowing down, the big boys are having to mine increasingly obscure titles to find the next Batman, Iron Man or *sigh* Ant Man. This year has already seen underwhelming cosmic policeman Green Lantern, and now it sounds as if the oddest project in Marvel development hell is actually being given a kick up the caped arse…

In case you’re not au fait with the strange goings-on of Marvel’s Silver Age of comics, Doctor Strange is a selfish neurosurgeon who travels the world looking for a cure after his hands are ruined in a car accident. He heads to the Himalayas, meets a fellow called The Ancient One and before you can say ‘this is all a bit racist’ he becomes the SUPREME SORCERER OF THE UNIVERSE, battling all manner of intergalactic nasties to keep Earth safe. For your delectation, here’s an abridged list of his frankly stupid talents:

“Doctor Strange can use magic to achieve virtually any effect he desires, such as telepathy, energy blasts, teleportation, astral projection, the creation of materials (such as food and water), creating planet-wide protective shields, restoring himself from bodily destruction, or resurrecting the dead.
Strange is capable of stopping and reversing time on a planetary scale, sealing black holes, restoring universes, absorbing power enough to unconsciously destroy any surrounding galaxies, growing to the size of and merging with universal concepts, and helped to channel the mass of the entire Marvel Universe.”

Thank you, Wikipedia. So he can do anything, yeah? Sounds really, like, dynamic and stuff. Anyway, Marvel have shortlisted some directors and received a script from Thomas Donnell and Joshua Oppenheimer (Conan the Barbarian), so it looks like this is actually happening. It’s all about the magic these days, eh? First Thor‘s godly exploits, then Captain America and his Cosmic Cube, now this. If you’d told our thirteen-year-old Trudi Canavan-reading selves that we’d be this bored by massive fantasy movies, we’d have laughed in your face.

Can you be bothered with Doctor Strange? You know the drill.