Benedict Cumberbatch will be under director Sam Raimi’s orders longer than initially expected. According to many reports, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is currently undergoing some significant reshoots.

The Doctor is going to be in L.A. working overtime for the next six weeks according to The Hollywood Reporter. The cast and crew members of the film will be busy working six days a week until late December. The reshoots are going to be rather extensive given the intense schedule. Some sources were quoted by THR as underplaying their significance, “We’ve had bigger reshoots on other MCU movies.”

Strangely, another source stated just about the opposite, “They’re here until the end of the year. That’s like a whole other movie.” The reshoots are going to be done alongside completely new scenes that still needed shooting due to delays in production. These delays were caused by various reasons. Two weeks alone are going to be dedicated to principal photography, which had been delayed because of the actor’s availability issues. Another reason was the COVID induced lockdown measures when the film was shooting in the UK. Production had originally started filming in the UK during November of 2020 but had come to a halt in January of 2021.

It is unclear whether these reshoots have anything to do with reshaping the plot of the film. Multiverse of Madness is going to take the Sorcerer Supreme to visit different realities, in a similar style that What if…? on Disney+ takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride of various Marvel Universes. Elizabeth Olsen has been confirmed to appear in the film as Wanda Maximoff, following the fallout of WandaVision. The Scarlett Witch is known to possess the power to manipulate reality and Doctor Strange to control time, a film with these two reality-altering superheroes promises to have a somewhat convoluted plot.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was originally planned to release on March 25, 2022, but has since been pushed back to May 6, of the same year. Other Marvel productions such as Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania have been pushed back to later dates as well.