How Ryan Gosling might have looked as Doctor Strange

Even those who’ve never read the comics know who Doctor Strange is now, right? He’s Marvel’s most mystical superhero, a master magician who starred in his own solo movie in 2016, and will be back in ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ and surely a solo sequel down the line – played, so we expect, by Benedict Cumberbatch.

However, while the ‘Sherlock’ actor is said to have been Marvel’s first choice for the role all along, a scheduling conflict initially ruled him out, so the comic book movie giants were forced to look elsewhere – and one of the actors they had in mind was Ryan Gosling.

As we all know this didn’t come to pass; Marvel graciously rescheduled production on ‘Doctor Strange,’ allowing Cumberbatch to first fulfill his commitment to a stage production of ‘Hamlet,’ and the film proved to be a huge success with him in the lead.

But as ‘Doctor Strange’ tells us, our universe is but one of many – and as such there’s another universe in which Gosling did take the role, and Stephen Strange looked rather more like this:

This handsome concept art (brought to our attention by ComicBook.com) is the handiwork of artist Court Chu, who shared it with the world back in November via his blog, remarking, “I worked probably not even a day on some version of Doctor Strange years ago, and back then they wanted Gosling.”

For less than a day’s work, this is a pretty impressive glimpse at a world that might have been, although it’s a little hard to imagine anyone but Cumberbatch in the role now.

Other actors known to have been in contention for ‘Doctor Strange’ include Joaquin Phoenix, Jared Leto, Keanu Reeves, Justin Theroux, and Ethan Hawke, lead actor in director Scott Derrickson’s earlier film ‘Sinister.’

‘Doctor Strange’ made over £536 million at the global box office in 2016, and comes to home entertainment in the UK from 6 March 2017.

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