Peyton Reed, the guy who took over from Edger Wright on the Ant Man project was originally in the running to direct Guardians of the Galaxy. But the studio went with James Gunn, much to Joss Whedons delight. Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios explains;
"Hes come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians. He had a lot of awesome things to say on Guardians. But James had a slightly more solid take that was of interest to us. But Peyton was always on our lists, and so when this happened and Edgar said Not for me we met with a handful of people, but Peyton was always one that I thought would be great."
Clearly the Celestials were shining down on the Guardians that day because it shows how great a film like this can be when you have a tight script and James Gunns and Nicole Perlmans writing hits all the right notes. When Gunn wrote his draft of the script, it was Whedon who told him to be less formulaic and inject more James Gunn into it;
After I wrote the first draft of my screenplay everybody seemed to be very excited. They seemed to really love the screenplay and Louis DEsposito and Kevin Feige and everybody was coming to me and telling how great it was," Gunn said. "Then Joss came in and Joss was happy, but he wasnt as happy as everybody else and I was like, 'Whoa man!' and hes like, 'Well I really loved this and this is great, and the storys been cracked, but you know I just really want there to be more 'James Gunn' in a script. Theres things that are too conventional and I want more James Gunn in it.' I was kinda like sittin there and then Kevin and Lou were like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah' and I was like, 'All right, your funeral.' Then went home and I swear to God, I wrote a a 7-page scene where the guys are in the spaceship arguing about something and its all dialogue and were about to shoot it on Friday.
So all those bits in the film we LOLd at, we have Joss Whedon to thank for kicking the script in that direction. Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci could learn a lot from reading the screenplay.
