Benedict Cumberbatch is about to make magic…movie magic. He will star in the next magic themed film which will be released November 4th. This film will be even more fantastic than other recent magical films because it is about Marvel’s Doctor Strange.

Cumberbatch will play Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange, a world-famous neurosurgeon whose healing hands are ruined in a car accident. Desperate to regain his skills and the material luxuries they afford, he travels to the exotic city of Kamar-Taj, where he meets a guru known as the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton. Trained in the mystic arts, he is reborn as Earth’s “Sorcerer Supreme”, the defender of our realm against other-dimensional and mystical threats. Read earlier stories in The Magic Compass about this film and watch the trailers by clicking HERE and HERE.

Cumberbatch is also slated to play a more down to earth magician in The War Magician. In this film he will play Jasper Maskelyne, an English magician that uses the principles of stage magic to defeat Nazis with magic tricks. Not only did Maskelyne influence the outcome of WWII but he developed warcraft magic whose principles are still in use today. The War Magician will be scripted by former Star Wars: Rogue One screenwriter Gary Whitta. This story was also previously released in The Magic Compass. CLICK HERE to read that story.

Why is Benedict Cumberbatch being cast in these magical roles? Is it because he is a versatile actor or is it because he is an actor that also does magic? Recently he did some impressive hocus pocus with a bottle of water for Vanity Fair, all while casually delivering a message about the importance of water to our world.

In just under two minutes, Marvel’s newest superhero waxes philosophic about the many magical qualities of water and he did this while defying the laws of gravity. “We need to really take care that we don’t waste our resources,” he says in the video. “Water is first and foremost amongst those resources on our planet.”