Doctor Strange Trademarks Pretty Much Confirm Doctor Strange Movie Is Coming Soon

One of the biggest surprises of 2014 San Diego Comic-Con is that Marvel Studios did not announce a Doctor Strange movie. Shortly before Comic-Con, reports broke that Joaquin Phoenix was in talks to play Doctor Strange, so many were expecting him to be announced as Doctor Strange at Comic-Con.

But the only new Marvel Studios movie announcement that fans got at Comic-Con was for the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. However, there is a very big indication that a Doctor Strange movie is going to be announced very soon. A whole bunch of new trademark applications for Doctor Strange that Marvel filed on July 25, 2014 just popped up in the United States Trademark and Patent Office database.

The new Doctor Strange trademark applications cover a wide variety of categories including cosmetics, audio books, jewelry, watches, paper and paper articles, backpacks, key chains, furniture, figurines, bed linen, bakeware, lunch boxes, toys, games, fruit-based snack foods, chewing gum, breakfast cereals, education and entertainment services, and more.

When Marvel files such a wide range of trademarks on its properties, it’s virtually always because they are about to announce a movie or TV show based on the property. The same thing was done with Ant-Man, Jessica Jones, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Big Hero 6 in the recent past.

From what we’ve heard, the date that keeps coming up most frequently for a Doctor Strange movie is July 8, 2016. With the recent trademark filings, that date makes sense, and we would expect that an announcement from Marvel Studios could be coming any day now.