The rumours have had it right all along – Benedict Cumberbatch will indeed be putting on the moustache and cape to play Marvel superhero Doctor Strange after the casting was confirmed at Disney’s D23 expo at the weekend.

The Oscar-nominated English actor was officially unveiled as playing the good doctor, and though he couldn’t be at the convention in person due to his theatrical commitments to ‘Hamlet’ in London, he delivered a pre-recorded presentation about the upcoming Marvel movie, scheduled for release on November 4th, 2016.

Benedict CumberbatchBenedict Cumberbatch was officially unveiled as 'Doctor Strange' at Disney's D23

39 year old Cumberbatch, the star of ‘Sherlock’ and The Imitation Game, told the assembled crowd via his message: “I'm very excited and very lucky to be taking on Doctor Strange. He's an extraordinary character and brings in a whole 'nother dimension - multiple dimensions - to the Marvel Universe.”

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The story concerns Doctor Stephen Strange, a brilliant surgeon, who loses the use of his hands in a car accident. In a worldwide search attempting to find a cure, he encounters The Mystical One (played by Tilda Swinton in the upcoming film) in the Himalayas who trains him to use mystical powers to protect Earth from enemies from other dimensions.

Both Cumberbatch and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige – who was present in person at the convention in Anaheim – promised that Doctor Strange would be visually unlike anything the studio had attempted before, as part of a new phase of Marvel movies, in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man.

It will be “as weird as anything we’ve done,” Feige said, and with his usual charm, Cumberbatch said in his video “you’re going to get girls, cars, explosions, and astral projections into multiple universes. The usual fare.” The concept art that was unveiled also saw the illustrated Doctor Strange gazing heroically at distant galaxies while turning buildings upside-down, so we can be sure that Marvel is pulling out all the stops to set this movie apart.

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