Now with Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness out in cinemas and making bank, currently $479 million worldwide via Box Office Mojo, screenwriter Michael Waldron (Loki, Rick and Morty) had a spoiler-heavy chat with Rolling Stone and revealed details about the possibility of Tom Cruise having a brief cameo.
To give a brief history – in the early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there were reports heavily indicating Tom Cruise was going to sign on to play Iron Man before Robert Downey Jr was ultimately cast, and the rest is history.
So when the trailers revealed the Illuminati was going to appear in the Dr Strange sequel, the 1% of film and Marvel nerds began to speculate the possibility of Cruise popping up as an alternate version of Iron Man known as Superior Iron Man, an evil Tony Stark.
It’s not a spoiler to say Cruise isn’t in the movie, but during Waldron’s discussion with Rolling Stone reveals there was an idea “I love Tom Cruise, and I said to Kevin Feige at one point, I was like, ‘Could we get Tom Cruise’s Iron Man?’” stated Waldron. “I remember reading about that in Ain’t It Cool News back in the day, that Tom Cruise was going to be Iron Man.”
However, Michael says that he doesn’t think anybody from Marvel reached out to Cruise due to his availability because “he was shooting Mission Impossible 7 and 8.”
Of course, it would’ve been cool to have seen it happen, and the shock from general audiences would’ve been great, but it wouldn’t have made that scene any better because the characters shown didn’t add much. Though I would have loved to have seen how Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch would’ve killed him.
If you want to check out more spoiler talk about Multiverse of Madness, go check out the Rolling Stone interview with a lovely quote from Waldron about what he learnt from film’s director Sam Raimi.
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