The May 6th release date of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is quickly approaching, and we may now know the film’s running time. Star Benedict Cumberbatch has said ” if it brings off the level of ambition it’s got, we’re going to have a success on the level of (Spider-Man: No Way Home)” – and if the running time listed on the Brazilian ticketing website Ingresso is accurate, the movie will be the same length as Spider-Man: No Way Home as well. That running time: 148 minutes.

148 minutes isn’t staggering in a time when we’ve recently gotten a Batman movie that’s 176 minutes and a James Bond movie that’s 163 minutes, but that would actually make Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness one of the longest MCU movies to date. There are only three that are longer than that – Avengers: Infinity War (149 minutes), Eternals (156 minutes), and Avengers: Endgame (181 minutes).

I’m all for the Doctor Strange sequel being one of the longer installments, not only because the hero apparently has a whole lot of universes to travel through over the course of the movie, but also because this marks the return of director Sam Raimi nine years after his last feature film (and fifteen years after his last superhero movie). I want to see as much new Raimi footage as I can get.

Scripted by Jade Halley Bartlett and Loki head writer Michael Waldron, the film reportedly has the following synopsis (translated from a Japanese source):

The door of the multiverse, full of mystery and madness, opens.

Now that Iron Man and Captain America have left after a fierce battle in Avengers: Endgame, former genius surgeon and the strongest magician of them all, Doctor Strange, is expected to play an active role as a central figure in the Avengers. However, using his magic to manipulate time and space at will with a forbidden spell that is considered the most dangerous has opened the door to a mysterious madness called the Multiverse. To restore a world where everything is changing, Strange seeks help from his ally Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme, and the Avengers’ most powerful Scarlet Witch, Wanda. But a terrible threat looms over humanity and the entire universe that no longer can be done by their power alone. Even more surprising, the greatest threat in the universe looks exactly like Doctor Strange…

Director Sam Raimi, who has expressed a unique world view, will captivate the whole world with overwhelming scale and unprecedented visual experience that will transcend time and space!

In addition to Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Wong as Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo, Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer, Michael Stuhlbarg as Nicodemus West, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch, and Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez, a.k.a. Miss America.. Raimi regular Bruce Campbell is expected to make an appearance as well.

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