Benedict Cumberbatch, best known to superhero aficionados as Doctor Strange, is the latest star to come out strongly in support of a women-led Marvel film.
Cumberbatch appeared on BuzzFeed News' AM to DM Friday morning along with Tuppence Middleton, his costar in The Current War, a film about the rivalry between electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.
"Yeah, bring it, why not?" Cumberbatch said when asked about his thoughts on an all-women Marvel feature.
"There's space for that definitely. We're seeing the rise of the female superhero and why not?" he said. "It'd be great."
Cumberbatch's backing of this particular idea comes on the heels of his Marvel costar Elizabeth Olsen's endorsement earlier this month.
Olsen, who plays the character Scarlet Witch, told BuzzFeed News, "I think people really love these characters.
"I feel like all the men in Marvel movies have done such a brilliant job with satisfying a lot of things our audiences want, and they're funny and they're talented," she said.
"And so are all the women. And to give them more screen time, I think, would be a huge impact because comics aren't just for boys who want to watch big boys."
Unrelated to Marvel is Cumberbatch and Middleton's film, The Current War, which opened in theaters in the United States on Friday.
Its release was delayed after premiering in 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival, though Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, the film's director, said the project was not ready to be screened at the time. It was one of the last films produced by Harvey Weinstein, who was accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and harassment. Because of a clause in Gomez-Rejon's contract that Martin Scorsese could sign off on the final cut, the director's original vision for the film was able to be completed and released under the title The Current War: Director's Cut.
"It's another sort of crying shame and a saga that had a lot of difficulties, but what's great and why we're here is to support Alfonso," Cumberbatch told BuzzFeed News.
"This is his film, not a film that was originally wrestled from him and turned into something else that was just not the intention of him as a filmmaker."
Middleton added that while the delay ran its course "everyone was working behind the scenes the past two years to make it as good as it could possibly be."
"Alfonso was recutting all the time and we filmed some additional photography, new scenes, and it became a very different film," she said. "There was always the intention that it would come out and it would be Alfonso's cut."
"It was great that everyone was so passionate about it," Middleton said. "We got there in the end."
Check out the complete interview below:
