Before Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as Doctor Strange, it seemed likely that Ethan Hawke would be playing the part. Hawke is a friend of Doctor Strange director Scott Derickson; the two worked together on last year’s Sinister, and Hawke seemed interested in the role.
On MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ethan Hawke discussed that time when he was almost maybe chosen to lead Marvel’s next endeavor. He said he was “as close as anybody could” be to playing Strange (Joaquin Phoenix was also rumored for the part).
In the interview, Hawke also chatted about the landscape of superhero work in Hollywood. And, as the Marvel Universe rounds out Phase 2 of their movie-calendar and has announced Phase 3 until the decade’s end, Hawke’s comments about Marvel and the commitments of participating in the Marvel Universe are particularly noteworthy.
“We’re living in the age of Marvel,” said the actor, who claimed that the studio has “tremendous power over what we’re going to see.” Hawke added: “There’s a tremendous amount of salesmanship that’s now really important to a studio like that. It’s a tremendous amount of time in your life where you’re working, and you’re not acting.”
That last comment is striking, and worth noting when discussing casting choices in the era of Franchise Domination. We know actors primarily as performers in film and television, but in today’s age of bloated, extended franchise development, most of the work that comes with participation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or DC, or X-Men, etc) is not actually acting.
It is promotional work. Touring. Fan events, comic-con, etc. It is marketing. This isn’t new for actors, by any means. Actors have always been involved in the sale of a film, to the public if not to the studio itself. Publicity tours and junkets and fan events have been around for decades, and like all jobs, acting as a career involves any number of non-acting commitments.
But there’s no doubt that the amount of non-acting that actors are required to do has increased precipitously in recent years. Obviously some actors love this. Benedict Cumberbatch, for example, must appreciate all this non-acting; he’s showing up in franchise after franchise these days. 
But that such ‘salesmanship,’ as Hawke refers to it, might not appeal to an actor is hardly a surprise. The love of acting or interest in a role may lead one into a commitment to playing part, but today that is, always, a commitment to the marketing. To join Marvel in all likelihood, means commitment to a part, and the marketing, for years and years. Few parts are 1-time appearances across the Marvel Universe, and those who’ve been around since the beginning are going on 10 years in their roles (Robert Downey, Jr. was cast as Tony Stark in 2006).
And that’s enough to give actors pause, even regret. Idris Elba, for example, has made public that he has no love for his continued Marvel commitments. Edward Norton, who declined to return as Hulk for Avengers, this year said he just didn’t want to spend his days doing the same thing forever.
We shouldn’t necessarily presume that Hawke himself is among that list. “We’re living in the age of Marvel,” he said. “I’m totally open to doing something like that.”
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