
Right from Entertainment Weekly:
This week’s First Look issue of Entertainment Weekly offers a very early peek at Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel’s new superhero film, Doctor Strange (out Nov. 4). How early? Well, principal photography on the film — which costars Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Mads Mikkelsen — only began in November, and director Scott Derrickson won’t wrap the movie until March. EW’s First Look cover shoot with Cumberbatch was one of the very first times the British actor tried on the costume that his character, Doctor Stephen Strange, wears after transforming from a self-centered surgeon to a world-protecting sorcerer. The Sherlock star even used the shoot as something of a research-and-development session for the gesticulations which are part of his character’s spell-casting.
“I’m still in the infancy of learning all that,” Cumberbatch tells EW. “It was like, okay, I’ve got to keep throwing these poses, these spells, these rune-casting things, everything he does physically. I’m thinking, there’s going to be a huge amount of speculation and intrigue over the positioning of that finger as opposed to it being there, or there. And I’m still working on that. We haven’t played any of those scenes yet. I felt really self-conscious. But, then, by the end, it was great. It’s like anything, you just have to experiment.”