Doctor Strange Starts FRIDAY!!!

FUN FACTS

• Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” was shot in London, New York, Kathmandu (Nepal) and Hong
Kong.

• The Art Department was very important to helping realize the look of the film. At full capacity, it harbored 49 people working in drawing, sculpting, model making by hand, 3D printing and more. Approximately 800 drawings, 3000 concept drawings and 40 set models were created over the course of the film.

• Steve Ditko’s comic book art influenced the environments that were created for the
film.

• When you watch the movie, you will notice that geometric patterns are present within the majority of sets.

• 21 sets were built for the shoot. There were many impressive, practical sets, including the largest set, The Kamar-Taj courtyard and street, which measured 160 ft. by 80 ft.

• Up to 100 people worked in the costume department across prep and shoot.

• The silhouette of the Cloak of Levitation is very important in the Marvel comic book world and the creation of the cloak was the biggest undertaking for Alexandra Byrne’s costume department, utilizing the skills of 20 people to do the task. Because of the different uses during filming, 18 cloaks had to be made.

• Doctor Strange’s car in the film is a Lamborghini, which he drives when he is a surgeon. Six Lamborghinis were required for filming.

• One of the camera lenses used on the film had a cinematic history of its own, having been used on “Lawrence of Arabia.”

• To research his character, Dr. Stephen Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch spent time with neurosurgeons, and the director, DP and production designer all visited New York City 2 operating rooms and emergency rooms to guide them towards the lighting and textures they would need to create a realistic hospital environment onscreen.

• Filming in Nepal was difficult to keep under wraps because as it turns out many
Nepalese are Benedict Cumberbatch fans from “Sherlock,” the BBC TV show he stars in.
In Patan Durbar Square there was a crowd of hundreds chanting his name, so
Cumberbatch went to an upstairs window overlooking the square to wave to the crowd,
which went wild for him.

• Some interior scenes were shot at historic Exeter College, part of the University of Oxford. J.R.R. Tolkien, among other notables, was an undergraduate at Exeter.

• In the movie, the Sanctum Sanctorum’s address, 177A Bleecker Street, is a fictitious address and a nod to the comic books. It took roughly 10 months to finalize the design and details of the Sanctum Sanctorum foyer, utilizing the skills of five artists.

• While filming in New York City, Benedict Cumberbatch, in full costume, went for an
afternoon cup of tea between setups with his wife and some friends in a cafe in
Greenwich Village. Even the usually nonplussed New Yorkers were surprised to have a
Super Hero in their midst.

• On a New York City street, just before production wrapped on the last scene of the film, Cumberbatch entered a comic book shop to say hello and quickly the moment was
captured with selfies that went viral around the world.

• The Hong Kong Street set was built outside on a service road at Longcross Studios in London and was 570 feet long. It was patterned after reference images the Art
Department had gathered in Hong Kong. The set featured 35 shops, including
restaurants, food stalls, dry cleaning, car mechanics, watch shop, butcher, herbal
medicine, general stores, paper and printing.

• The Hong Kong street scenes, one of the most challenging action sequences ever
undertaken by Marvel Studios, were shot in several stages of destruction, commencing
with clean and gradually becoming destroyed. This is the opposite of how it will be
shown on screen, as it goes from destroyed to clean. This meant everything had to be
aged down, from shop signs to vehicles. To help create the destruction, 350 tons of real rubble was used.