Among those attending the Iron Man 3 premiere last night was director James Gunn who revealed details and dispelled rumours about his upcoming Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy, to
HeyUGuys. Gunn confirmed that they would begin shooting at Shepperton Studios at the end of June and that Chris Pratt and Michael Rooker were on the cast. He wouldnt confirm Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautistas involvement but from his answers, it seems they are fully on board.
We havent really come out with our cast, people have gotten hold of some things, but I will say one thing: Dave Bautista is one of the most naturally gifted actors I have ever seen in my life. said Gunn. The guy has access to his emotions in a way that I have seen very few people able to do, and if he did get the role of Drax Ill tell you, nobody else was ever offered that role, at all; anything you heard about that is bullshit, and if he did get the role, its 100% because of his ability to access his emotions, more so than anything else. And it just so happens that the guy was created in the cast of Drax when he was born, he looks just like Drax.
Rocket Raccoon remains uncast but Gunn is courting his dream guy for the role and feels certain he will oblige. He did confirm that Jason Statham would not be cast as Rocket, who was GotG comics writer Brian Michael Bendis pick and called the character, the heart of the movie:
Ive done a lot of studying with real racoons, and we had real racoons come in. Weve done photography with them, Ive played with racoons, and fed racoons, and dealt a lot with real racoons to get some of the behaviour down, because its really, really important to me that Rocket Racoon, who is the heart of the movie, is not a cartoon character, its not Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers, its a real, little, somewhat mangled beast thats alone. Theres no one else in the universe quite like him, hes been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine.
Gunn stated Robert Downey Jr. would not appear in the movie either as a main character or as a cameo but confirmed that GotG would be connected to the current crop of Marvel movies, especially The Avengers 2:
All our movies are connected, were created in a way that were very connected to the movies that came before us, were even more connected to The Avengers 2, that comes after us, and so in that respect, what we would hope is that these characters would continue, and that at some point in time theyll all meet up with different characters throughout the galaxy.
Despite some of the concept art for the movie being revealed in the Marvel Phase One box set earlier this month, GotG will be very different from the Star Wars look.
I do think were very, very different from Star Wars. Some of the concept art that came out is under my tutelage, and some of it is before my tutelage. The concept art that came out is only stuff that was on the big Marvel collected disc set, talking about phase two and it had some stuff from Guardians. Some of the art by Charlie Wen and the guys.
Guardians of the Galaxy is scheduled for release on 1 August 2014.