During the San Diego Comic-Con earlier this year, Marvel revealed the identity of Star-Lord’s father in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, with James Gunn dropping quite the surprise when he announced it as none other than Ego, the Living Planet.
Well, it seems Ego’s inclusion in the Guardians sequel actually only came about through a trade with 20th Century Fox, with Deadpool co-writer Paul Wernick revealing that Fox granted Marvel the rights to use the character in order to be able to get the go ahead to modify the power set of Deadpool’s young mutant Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
“We were looking down the list of the 400 [X-Men] characters that Fox owns, and NTW jumped out and we were like, ‘yes, I don’t care what her powers are. She’s gonna be in the movie,'” Wernick tells The Playlist. “Kurt Russell [‘s Ego the Living Planet] in the new Guardians movie was the character that Fox swapped with Marvel to [change] Negasonic Teenage Warhead powers.”
James Gunn also took to Facebook to confirm the deal, stating that: “Yes, this is true! When I first pitched Ego as Quill’s father, I THOUGHT we owned the character. After I had worked out a very elaborate story with Ego the Living Planet as a very important part of the Marvel cosmic universe, I learned that we actually didn’t own the character. I had no back up plan, and it would be nearly impossible to just drop another character in. Thank God Fox came to us and wanted to make a trade…”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is set for release on May 5th 2017, while Deadpool 2 is currently in development (as is Deadpool 3 apparently).
Originally published November 15, 2016. Updated January 23, 2020.
