Viggo Mortensen to Play Doctor Strange in Thor: The Dark World?

Posted by on September 11th, 2012   Filed under: Books/Comics, Fantasy, Rumours
Source: Screen Rant

With most of the movie industry hanging out at TIFF this week, there hasn’t been a lot of news to report aside from festival acquisitions. There is, however, an intriguing little casting rumour floating around out there that could be very cool if it proves to be accurate. Doctor Strange is one of the peripheral characters that Marvel has been trying to fit into the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe for a while now. Back in 2010, they hired Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (Sahara, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune) to write a script for a Doctor Strange movie, and Doctor Strange’s mystical amulet also supposedly appeared on-screen briefly in Thor. As far as we know, a Doctor Strange solo film will not be a part of their second wave of films, but could he make a cameo in one of the other upcoming flicks? It sounds like it is a definite possibility, and they may already be in talks with a big name actor to play the role.

The good folks over at Screen Rant recently did a little digging and realized that Viggo Mortensen might be the man that Disney and Marvel have in mind to play Doctor Strange. This deduction came from a couple of seemingly unrelated scoops from the Twitter account of a guy named Roger Wardell. He has apparently leaked information about upcoming Marvel productions before, and this time around he put out the following tweets:

“Inside News: Marvel is negotiations with Viggo Mortensen for an unspecified role in one of their Phase 2 films.”

“Inside News: There’s something “Strange” about Thor: The Dark World”

Clearly this is all just speculation at the moment, and we don’t even know that those statements are accurate, much less connected. However, it does seem like the perfect casting choice, doesn’t it? It had been previously rumoured that Marvel wanted Joel Edgerton for Doctor Strange but that his schedule was too full. Mortensen doesn’t seem to have quite so many commitments at the moment. Does this casting possibility seem likely to you? Would you like to see Doctor Strange eventually join The Avengers and, if so, is Viggo Mortensen be a good choice to play the role?



  • La Menthe

    There really is no argument: Viggo Mortensen is a great actor and definitely one of the best in North-American cinema. But considering the type of films he picks (that is, films that have a minimum form of quality); I doubt he will accept the role.

  • @La Menthe —- Sure, if you just look at 21st century, post-LOTR Viggo, but the guy is no stranger to genre fare, and signing up for Avengers (there was certainly some quality there) would hardly be the silliest thing he’s ever done. I mean, just take a look at his 90’s resume.

  • Zac

    After hearing about this for the past week, I’d be disappointed if any one but Viggo got the part. I’m sure he’d have a ton of fun with the role, and I’d love to see him spit out some Whedon dialogue.