Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is nearing release, and we can expect a massive promotional campaign soon from Marvel Studios. The film can be the biggest event in the MCU for a solo film, which will open the franchise to the wonders and horrors of the multiverse, a concept Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home paved the path for. The film is going to feature previous cast members from Doctor Strange while introducing Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez, and a surprise appearance from Patrick Stewart, who’ll probably reprise his role as Charles Xavier/Professor X from X-Men Series. The film’s trailers have already revealed that we’ll see multiversal variants of the film’s characters, including variants of Strange and Wanda, delving deeper into the outturns of a branched timeline.

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Given its crucial plot and the number of story arcs and characters it has in it, one can wonder it’ll be a pretty long movie, so it allows for the in-depth interpretation of what could be the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it seems like that is indeed the case.

Brazilian ticketing website, Ingresso has mentioned that the film will be 148 minutes long in its listing of upcoming releases. If that’s true, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will equal Spider-Man: No Way Home, which also clocked at 2 Hours 28 Minutes. This record still falls behind Eternals, the longest Phase Four movie, clocking in at 2 hours and 36 minutes.

Is Doctor Strange 2 Long Enough For Its Content?

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Though there’s a lot of stuff in the film which comprises elements and hints from past Marvel movies not made under the studio’s banner, the runtime still seems long enough for Marvel Studios to pull it off. Avengers: Infinity War probably had a more spread-out screenplay with various scenarios of the same war going o simultaneously; however, the film managed to successfully do justice to the script in 2 Hours 29 Minutes, which is just one minute over the upcoming Doctor Strange film.

The sequel also surpasses its predecessor film, 2016’s Doctor Strange, by a considerable margin of time, as the latter clocked in at just 115 minutes. In fact, Marvel Studios has been pretty tight with the runtime of all its films, making them as crisp as possible, as hardly two of its movies crosses the 2 hours and 30 minutes mark; one being Eternals and the other being Avengers: Endgame. The latter, given the grand conclusion it was, clocked at 3 hours and 1 minute, making it the longest one of the franchise.

So, it’s definitely possible that Sam Raimi would’ve covered the crucial aspects of the film without leaving gaps in the given run time. The film, scheduled to release this May, has also undergone a series of reshoots, which would’ve affected the runtime.

There’s no official statement on the film’s runtime of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Earlier, speculations of Spider-Man: No Way Home clocking above 2 Hours 40 Minutes turned out to be false, which means the reported runtime from Ingresso might not be 100% final.

Fans are currently excited about how Sam Raimi will bring forth the multiverse and set up its consequences that shall be seen in future Marvel projects. The excitement is, of course, around the appearance of Patrick Stewart, which could be the beginning of X-Men’s merger with the pre-established MCU. Whatever the final runtime is, the movie will probably not fail to do justice to all its elements.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness releases May 6, 2022.