Guillermo Del Toro to Direct Marvel Comic's Dr. Strange?

Guillermo Del Toro has been all over the map recently with his directing projects. In addition to the highly regarded Pan's Labyrinth, he has just recently wrapped shooting on Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Beyond that, the director is rumored to be in talks to direct The Hobbit. And now he tells Empire Online that he is interested in possibly bringing Marvel Comic's Dr. Strange to the big screen.

Strange is less well-known than such Marvel mainstays as Spider-Man, the X-Men or The Hulk, but is an important figure in Marvel mythology, serving as the Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth's dimension.

"I talked with Neil Gaiman [about writing it]," he says. "I said, that's an interesting character because you can definitely make him more in the pulpy occult detective/magician mould and formula than was done in the Weird Tales, for example...the idea of a character that really dabbles in the occult in a way that's not X-Filey, where the supernatural is taken for granted. That's interesting...But I wouldn't use the suit!"

(Dr. Strange's costume is among the more garish in Marvel Comics, for those who are unaware.)

Gaiman would be a good choice to write the screenplay, having a long experience with the supernatural figures within comic books.

The character of Dr. Strange has been seen on television before, both in a pilot for a failed TV series back in the 1970's, and in the recent animated feature Doctor Strange.