Patrick Dempsey Wants to Play Doctor Strange
Posted 04.03.11 by Ryan
Grey's Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey hasn't appeared in many comic book movies, but is attempting to win fanboy favor in Michael Bay's upcoming sequel Transformers 3. Dempsey is hoping his appearance will translate into other comic book movie roles, particularly Doctor Strange, the surgeon turned sorcerer (supreme). Dempsey admitted to The LA Times that he is openly "lobbying" for the role of the Marvel Comics hero.
There’s a whole bunch of people [among the Grey's' crew] who are into comics and Marvel, too, on the set and they’re like, "Doctor Strange, that’s the one you should do." It would be fantastic. It’d be a great TV show, especially for HBO or something like that. I don’t know if I’d necessarily do another show, a drama, that’s 24 episodes again. HBO you’re at 13 and I think that’s much better. It’s just so hard to sustain the quality after three years if you’re doing 24, 25 episodes a year. It all depends on who you have as a writing team — it’s how you set it up, what’s the tone and making sure you’re not locked into this one-season success [mentality], you can’t be afraid to think beyond that.
Doctor Strange is one of the properties Marvel Studios is looking into turning into a movie, hiring Conan reboot screenwriters Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer to write a Doctor Strange script last June. Dempsey is aware that he needs to do a little public image altering before he would be considered for the part.
At Comic-Con they were talking about me playing it and there was a rumor that I’d been cast. I mean, it’s something that’s kind of out there and, you know, I’ve been looking at that. It would be a fun one to do. Hopefully, doing something like Transformers is about to show myself in an action situation where I’m not mister-weepy-doctor guy, you know, not McDreamy. You have to change that in people’s view. I’m still hungry for other things. I’d love to play Doctor Strange.
The character of Doctor Strange was created by Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko in 1963, and, though he has been a part of superheroes teams like The Defenders and the New Avengers, Doctor Strange usually works alone.
Lee has been a vocal supporter of putting the character on the big screen, revealing last April that "Doctor Strange is somewhat different than all the others."
I'd like to see a great movie come out of it. With the nightmares and the other dimensions, it'll give them a chance to have some great special effects and a slightly different type of hero.
As Dempsey mentioned, a TV show could be created for the character instead of a movie.