Bruce Campbell teases fans with set photo from a “strange” Sam Raimi movie
It's April 1, so who knows, but Campbell is certainly having fun hinting he'll be appearing in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
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Bruce Campbell shared a photo of himself on Twitter today adding the caption, “I always feel a little strange when I work on a Sam Raimi movie.”
Campbell is, we have to assume, referring to Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, the newest film from his frequent collaborator and old friend, Sam Raimi. Campbell is hanging out in a makeup chair looking strikingly similar to Benedict Cumberbatch’s titular neurosurgeon, complete with goatee and silver temples…albeit with a much more pronounced chin.
The big-screen Marvel entry finds Dr. Stephen Strange making his way through the multiverse to do battle with a new villain while running into allies both old and new…and possibly even himself. Spider-Man: No Way Home utilized the multiverse concept to crowd-pleasing effect, incorporating heroes and villains from Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy, as well as The Amazing Spider-Man films, so could Campbell be playing a Dr. Strange from another dimension? Will Campbell encounter Peter Hooten, who portrayed the good doctor in a 1978 television movie? Truly anything can happen, and despite anyone’s feelings on the over-saturation of Marvel pictures in multiplexes…that stuff is kind of cool.
Now, to be fair: Campbell did post this photo on April 1, The Day Where It’s Okay To Lie To People For Some Reason. That being said, it wouldn’t surprise anybody to learn he might be showing up in Raimi’s latest; the two have been friends since they met in middle school, and Raimi has found a spot for Campbell (and his Delta 88) in just about all of his feature films (including his three Spider-Man pictures). The two men went through the ultimate experience in grueling filmmaking with The Evil Dead—a movie that took three years to complete and release—and became icons for a generation of wanna-be filmmakers. Doctor Strange isn’t all the duo have in store for us this year, either—they are also both executive producing Evil Dead Rise, the latest film in the Evil Dead franchise, set to stream on HBO Max later in 2022
We’ll find out just what the pair are up to when Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness makes its way to theaters on May 6.
46 Comments
It couldn’t possibly be more photoshopped. AV Club’s hedging on that is just weird.
I’m no expert, but the face in the mirror looks like a photoshop job to me, particularly the goatee
As a designer, it looks pretty much photoshopped. The lighting and contrast between sharpness and blur didn’t match with the overall appearance of photograph here.Good try though.
Definitely a ‘shop, the pixel size is inconsistent across the image–check out how large they on the make-up artist’s face, for example!
I know the guy has a history of April Fools tweets (damn him, I really wanted that Adventures of Brisco County Jr. reboot to be real!), but I could totally see Raimi having him cameo as one of many alternate multiverse Stranges.
I believe if he’s anyone he’ll be Mysterio.
Battling the Deadites, of course.
Now I want a multi-verse where Ash becomes the Sorcerer Supreme
No, clearly he is going to be reprising his role as the greatest Marvel character ever filmed:
I think the April Fools is that Campbell is dressed as Strange. I would be very surprised if he didn’t have a cameo in MoM.
I was once at a Q&A for a screening of My Name Is Bruce (in 2007) where somebody asked him when we should expect another Evil Dead movie. He laughed and said something like “Did anybody see that new Indiana Jones movie? That’s why we’re done making Evil Deads!” Guess another 15 years and a giant sack of money was enough to make him change his mind on that. Hopefully he wasn’t right back then.
I was once at a Q&A with him where someone asked if had ever measured his chin. He asked, “Where would I start?” She replied, “Where the normal one ends.”
The TV show was genuinely good though, overall.
Even if it “ended too soon” (debatable since it never had a chance to jump) the series finale ends with Ash in the future which was the OG Army of Darkness ending anyway. So if they ever did do another they can pick up where they (originally) left off.
I was once at Q&A where someone asked: How did you get Danny Elfman to score Army Of Darkness.
Bruce paused and said the obvious (if hope-dashing-that-the-nerd-icons-secretly-worked-altruistically-together) answer of: we paid him a lot of money.
I believe this supports your “giant sack of money” hypothesis.
I’d hope it’s like the cameo in “The Quick and the Dead.”
Was that when they just had him get beat up and never actually put it in the film?
Yeah, still got a film credit. I loved that story.
Maybe he’s playing Dr. Mordrid.
No, but seeing Jeffrey Combs play Dr. Mordrid again might be fun….
Man, I’d kill for a multi-verse Jeffrey Combs Dr. Strange.
Mr. Wong, you are violating my territorial bubble!
Great Frighteners reference.
I was thrilled when that movie came out. “The weirdo who made Dead Alive and Bad Taste is doing a Michael J Fox movie?!? And fucking Jeffrey Combs is in it?!?”(At that point I had not yet found a copy of Meet the Feebles…)Of course I was gobsmacked when he landed LOTR.
And he has to first fight, then fight at the side of…The Question!
Honestly if Full Moon wasn’t a shell of its former self, they could make a Jeffrey Combs multiverse where all the characters he played in those movies got together
It would be fucking rad.
When I was around 12 I got really into Full Moon entertainment movies. They did a lot of those straight to video fake blockbusters that Asylum is none for these days but they also put out a lot of low budget horror and sci-fi that was silly funny. I remember getting a tape with a trailer for their “Doctor Strange” movie but was never able to find it. This was pre-internet so it was years later before I find out they lost the rights and changed the name. It’s better then the TV movie Doctor Strange Also excited that this movie is gonna be riffed by MST3K this year
Bruce made an appearance last fall at my local drive in for a QA before a showing of Evil Dead 2 and Bubba Ho-Tep, and he more or less told everyone (without actually saying so) that he had just finished filming a cameo for Dr. Strange. I’m
Bruce Campbell confirmed as Mephisto!
That’d be pretty great, tbh.
I want the rumors of him in Doctor Strange 2 to be real so bad
I’m almost 100% sure he’s in it. Raimi will always include him if he can and he’s always game. Usually it’s the studio who asks to cut his cameo because they don’t get it, but Disney/MCU knows what they got with Raimi and know the fans want a Bruce cameo.
Raimi: “I want Bruce Campbell in this scene”
Producers: “Who? Why?”Raimi: “He’s my guy. Every director has a guy. Tim Burton has Johnny Depp. Christopher Nolan has Michael Caine, Robert Rodriguez has Danny Trejo.”
Producers: “But those are all well-known, leading actors.”Raimi: “Ok, just think of Bruce as a fill-in for a Stan Lee cameo.”
Producers: “Let’s put a pin in that for now.”
The Blank Check podcast is covering Sam Raimi and they have John Hodgman on this week talking Evil Dead 2. Before Hodgman broke out as an author and actor he was a literary agent and he was the one that hooked Bruce to write “If Chins could Kill”. Apparently in the late 90s he got a lot of “Who?” responses to trying to sell the book to publishers. Joke was in them because they book sold like crazy.
That’s great! Yeah, both ‘Chins’ and ‘Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way’ are quite witty and insightful. I highly recommend the audio book version of ‘Make Love!…’, narrated by Campbell himself that chronicles a fictional account of being cast in a major Hollywood film starring Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger and all the inner workings and crazy stuff that goes on behind the scene in a major studio.
I’m kicking myself because I had two credits at Audible yesterday and forgotten they were on my wish list. I own them both in paperback but I’m a big audio book fan these days. Ended up grabbing “All About Me” by Mel Brooks and “Billions and Billions” by Carl Sagan(but sadly not read by him, I believe it was published after his death)
I’d be surprised if Bruce and Ted Raimi don’t have an appearance.
Seems to me the obvious role is the smarmy maitre d’ from Raimi’s Spiderman movies… The jacket fits.
I’m happy to see A.V. Club has taken on my style of not putting periods at the end of shit
*A V Club
Random crackpot theory (that I don’t actually believe) just to stir the pot: He’s not playing Stephen Strange, but Tony Stark from the universe seen in What If…? Vol. 1, issue 113, where Stark became the Sorcerer Supreme instead of Strange. For the curious: In that universe, Tony met Stephen at a party and gave him a ride home, but he was drunk and wrecked the car and ruined Stephen’s hands. So Tony was the one who took up magic to try and find a way to fix him and got roped into everything. But he’s still Tony Stark, so he built a suit of magical power armor. Meanwhile, Stephen is stuck basically being Tony’s miserable butler, eternally waiting for Tony to get around to repairing his hands.
The thing about Tony Stark is that he doesn’t work as a character unless you are writing him as a dick. He’s a very likeable dick and in the end he’s a good person but he’s also easily blinded by his science, privilege or just his own personal sense of what is “right”. He’s the kinda friend who is a great hang but don’t count on him to show up to help move a couch.
If it were an april fool’s joke, it would have been a better picture.