In Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange sequel, Stephen Strange teams up with a mysterious teenage girl from his dreams who can travel across multiverses, to battle multiple threats, including other-universe versions of himself, which threaten to wipe out millions across the multiverse. They seek help from Wanda the Scarlet Witch, Wong and others.

Luma collaborated with Marvel Studios on the Tentacle Creature Battle sequence in the first act of the film, working closely with Director Sam Raimi and Janek Sirrs to develop the design of Gargantos (the giant one-eyed octopus), as well as all the New York environment, crowds, digi doubles, and destruction effects for the battle scene. Luma’s Senior VFX Supervisor, Olivier Dumont, led the crew to deliver close to 270 shots that involved intricate creature work, digi doubles, crowds, and complex environments and effects.

In the battle scene, Gargantos appears on the streets of New York destroying everything in its path to capture America Chavez—the dimension travelling teenager. Doctor Strange and Wong fight the creature and a massive battle ensues, with Doctor Strange using his protective mandala shield and summoning items like an axe or demon hands to attack the sea monster. Luma Pictures was entrusted by Marvel Studios to create this giant octopus-like creature with a round head, one eye, and eight tentacles. Marvel provided concept art as reference, which Luma used to explore and develop different design iterations. Luma was tasked with defining the creature's behavior—how it moved, acted, and reacted—and we leaned into the inherent goofiness of the one-eyed monster, while aiming to make the creature look and feel as photoreal as possible.

Creating the massive environment build of the New York City streets involved everything from matte paintings to projections to full 3D environments. Luma utilized Unreal Engine for post-visualisation of the New York Cityscape background —building a unique Unreal layout pipeline so the team could quickly lay out and visualize buildings that would later translate to full city builds.