Earlier this week Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn revealed that he’s completed the first draft for the sequel to last year’s Marvel blockbuster, and now he’s shared a few details about Guardians of the Galaxy 2 during a Periscope interview (via Screen Rant).
“It’s a very moving script,” states Gunn, responding to Chris Pratt’s admission that he had tears in his eyes from the script. “Listen, one of the main things with Guardians of the Galaxy is not to add a bunch of characters, not to make it bigger in that way but to go deeper with the characters. And yeah, there’s going to be the big things we’ve come to expect from those big battles and action sequences and things like that, big colorful locations and beautiful set pieces, and wonderful designs by visual effects artists and all of us, but what really matters to me is going deeper into the characters and getting to know them more emotionally. And I think we have a story that’s really, truly true for everyone and it just happens to be about aliens.”
Gunn then went on to state there’ll be less characters in the sequel, although we will be introduced to someone new: “People ask for so many characters to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and they ask for so many actors who they want to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 but we actually have less characters in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 than we have in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 because everything is just getting too sprawling and too crazy for me in these superhero comic book movies. And also in superhero comics in general. There’s just too many characters so you can’t concentrate on one and really get to know that character, and I really want to get to know the characters that we know better, and yeah, we will be introducing a new character…”
Meanwhile, speaking about the development process, he also revealed that he intially planned to include another major character: “I did not get any help with the first draft of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 other than I wrote a scriptment which I’ve been working on for nine months, and I wrote that very, very in-depth scriptment which is a 70-page combination of a script and a treatment and it goes through every beat of the movie, everything, and I’ve been going through that and showing that to [Marvel Studios Boss] Kevin [Feige] and getting feedback and seeing what worked and what didn’t, what characters work, what didn’t. I mean, people will be disappointed – at some point I’ll release – but I had another big character in my original draft and it was just getting too busy. I took that character out. And it’s a character I like a lot and hope to work with in the future but I just didn’t have room for that person, that character.”
So, who could this new character be, then? And before you suggest, Gunn clarified that it’s not Captain Marvel…
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is set for release on April 28th 2017 in the UK and on May 5th in the States. Confirmed as returning to the cast are Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Bradley Cooper (Rocket), Vin Diesel (Groot), Karen Gillan (Nebulda), Michael Rooker (Yondu) and Sean Gunn (Kraglin).
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 5, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
