Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3

[dpippel]

Title: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ()

Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction, Comedy

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillan, Chris Hemsworth, Pom Klementieff, Elizabeth Debicki, Sean Gunn

Plot: The third film based on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.

With the announcement today that Disney has reinstated James Gunn (YAY!) as director for the third film, I thought it would be an appropriate day to start a dedicated thread for the movie.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

I had to check the date to be sure this wasn’t April Fool’s. Wow?

 

[dpippel]

I had to check the date to be sure this wasn’t April Fool’s. Wow?

Indeed:

https://deadline.com/2019/03/james-...ndefensible-social-media-messages-1202576444/

 

[Sam Favate]

Hopefully, we'll hear more about when to expect this during Marvel's presentation this summer at SDCC. As discussed in the other thread, it looks like 2022-2023.

 

[holtge]

As I stated in the Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 thread, I am so happy that cooler heads prevailed and that James Gunn especially never provided any reason for Disney to not reinstate him. It's really nice to know that the studio believes in redemption and forgiveness.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Good call Doug on starting this thread. The old one stopped being about Vol. 2 a long time ago.

Hopefully, we'll hear more about when to expect this during Marvel's presentation this summer at SDCC.

Absolutely. I expect they will announce their forthcoming slate this summer, either at SDCC or D23 or some combination thereof. It will probably consist of the projects we already know are coming that they haven't dated yet -- Black Widow, The Eternals, Shang-Chi, Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2, and this, plus (probably) a third MCU Spider-Man and Captain Marvel 2. I don't think it will be as wide-ranging as the last time they did a slate announcement, but they might as well make official the things they've already made deals for that are already public knowledge.

As discussed in the other thread, it looks like 2022-2023.

The good thing about Marvel is that since it's all one universe, they've certainly got enough stuff in the hopper to keep fans sated while the Guardians take a little hiatus. I don't want Gunn to rush this -- and I doubt he wants that either -- so I'm fine waiting until 2023 if that's the case. The Guardians characters will have appeared in three films in three consecutive years, so even though it's not the best version of the situation, I don't think the extra time off will hurt them because they're already firmly established at the forefront of the MCU.

 

[Sam Favate]

The Guardians characters will have appeared in three films in three consecutive years, so even though it's not the best version of the situation, I don't think the extra time off will hurt them because they're already firmly established at the forefront of the MCU.

Not to mention that if the rumored Disney+ show about Rocket and Groot happens, we'll have even more time in the Guardians section of the MCU to tide us over.

 

[Tino]

Still can’t believe Disney had a change of heart and reinstated Gunn. That’s very encouraging for many reasons.

 

[Sam Favate]

Still can’t believe Disney had a change of heart and reinstated Gunn. That’s very encouraging for many reasons.

It sure is. Shows there's hope when people in power make foolish decisions.

 

[darklight00]

I had to check the date to be sure this wasn’t April Fool’s. Wow?

Me too, I was thinking but its not April yet why are they making this joke...

 

[Tino]

It sure is. Shows there's hope when people in power make foolish decisions.

And they recognize and listen to the voice of the fans.

 

[Tommy R]

Though I was not very taken by the first Guardians movie, just found it very “blah”, I REALLY liked Vol. 2, and rate it among my top tier of Marvel movies, so I’m very happy to hear this news. I would have been a Gunn supporter regardless just on principle, though. Disney has very much impressed me in this decision.

 

[Malcolm R]

Though as others have said, I think perhaps DC announcing Gunn as the director of SS2 and that being a total no-reaction non-event yawn-fest contributed to their reversal.

They overreacted to something that was mostly old news and nearly derailed a major franchise. When they saw that Gunn was simply going to move on to another major frachise for a competing studio without controversy, they realized they may have made a mistake.

Hopefully in the future, they'll take a moment to evaluate the reality of the situation before making a knee-jerk reaction.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: what shocked me when his firing all went down was the speed with which the axe fell. The tweets surfaced and then it was almost immediate, like within a couple hours if I recall correctly. Disney didn't take any time to consider the ramifications of what they were doing; they just did it.

Joe Johnston did not direct The Winter Soldier, and Marvel had three different directors on the Thor films, and no one so much as raised an eyebrow over those replacements. Even when Edgar Wright left Ant-Man, they were able to continue that project, with Paul Rudd having been cast by Edgar Wright, by bringing in Peyton Reed and everything was fine. So I think they probably expected to be able to replace Gunn too without the fans -- and more importantly, the cast -- standing behind him, and Dave Bautista in particular in open revolt. But that underestimated a lot of things, including and especially the influence of Gunn's very specific vision for the Guardians films.

Once when I was in college, I spent two months organizing a reading of a play that I wrote, with a very large cast and lots of schedules to coordinate, and it took forever to settle on a date when everyone could do it. Two days before the show, the lead actor, whose role was the focal point of the whole thing, came to me and said, "Jake, my old school is having a a golf tournament this weekend and I really, really want to go to that. But I promised you I would do the show, so if you need me to, I'll skip it but I really, really, really want to go."

This put me in an incredibly difficult position because I really had to scramble. However, I told him to go because I knew if he stayed, he wouldn't want to be there and he wouldn't do the best job he could do because he would look at the show as having deprived him of the chance to go to his golf tournament, instead of being fully present and invested in what we were doing. I could have forced him to stay, but nothing good would have come of it if I did.

Similarly, the Guardians actors are under contract, so Disney could have tried to force them to do the film with another director, but if your cast doesn't want to be there, the performances would inevitably reflect that. Also, promoting the film would have been a disaster waiting to happen, because every interviewer would have started with the obvious: "You were on record supporting James Gunn to direct this, but he didn't. What do you think about that now, and what was the experience like filming it without him?" They would have essentially been asked to defend a film without Gunn when we all know they backed him to do it, and it's very difficult to sell that.

I think Disney needed to sit down and talk with the cast and crew and all involved parties before making any decision in regards to the the tweets in the first place. Their itchy trigger finger bought them a delay and bought Warner Bros. a probably-good Suicide Squad film that I will actually see. But they would have saved themselves a lot of hassle, embarrassment and bad press if they had taken this whole thing slower in the first place.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Thank freaking goodness James Gunn will get to make this. The heart of the Guardians films is his.

I’m hoping he will be able to get this out sometime in 2022.

Production on The Suicide Squad starts “late Fall” of this year. While it is set for an August 2021 release, I don’t think that he’ll need over a year and a half to make it. I expect it to have action and visual effects, but I wouldn’t expect it to require the same amount of visual effects rendering time as a Guardians or Avengers film. So if he finishes work on Squad by the end of 2020, he could start on Guardians 3 early 2021. That would line up with a Summer 2022 release.

If, for some reason, he isn’t able to start working on it until after Squad is released then it could maybe be a Christmas 2022 release, though Spring/Summer 2023 would probably be more likely.

I suspect his script is pretty much ready to shoot. The amount of pre-production time needed is a variable though.

Fingers crossed it’ll be May 2022.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I hope he uses the extra time to make Vol. 3 even better. Suicide Squad 2 sounds like basically a work-for-hire job.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Fingers crossed it’ll be May 2022.

I hope he uses the extra time to make Vol. 3 even better.

I'm not sure how much extra time he'll have, because Suicide Squad 2 is not going to be rushed to accommodate this, and it is his first priority.

Suicide Squad 2 sounds like basically a work-for-hire job.

From everything I've heard about that, it seems like WB let him do what he wanted with that property. He wrote it and is directing it and it's being described as "a complete reboot" versus the previous film. Obviously I can't speak for him, but I highly doubt he is viewing that as a work-for-hire situation. But even if he is viewing it that way, I expect him to devote himself to it and making it the best film it can be.

Suicide Squad has a release date of August 6, 2021, and he will be expected to do a press tour in support of that film, just as he would for any other film. Therefore, the absolute earliest he could probably devote 100% of his time to Guardians is fall 2021. Even though he already wrote a draft before his firing, I really doubt he'd be able to get the shooting and the effects and everything done quickly enough for summer 2022. There's also the matter of having to realign the cast's schedules, since they haven't exactly been waiting by the phone for Marvel's call since the original filming dates were abandoned.

If Disney is open to using a non-summer date for it, it could maybe go in November 2022 where Doctor Strange and Thor Ragnarok went. But as of right now, the dates Marvel has staked out for 2022 are February 8, May 6 and July 29. I just don't see 2022 being very likely. I think it's far more probable that they are looking at this as the summer kickoff film for 2023, whether that ends up in April like the last two Avengers or in their more traditional first weekend of May slot.

Would I like to see it sooner? Sure, but I don't want him to rush it at all. If it ends up being 2023, I'll wait.

 

[Josh Dial]

I think a release date may be partially influenced by the next major villain/story (assuming there is one). If, for example, the next major arc is Galactus or Annihilation, then I could see a Guardians movie playing a major role--whether that means bumping the release date forward or back slightly for arc purposes.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I'm not sure how much extra time he'll have, because Suicide Squad 2 is not going to be rushed to accommodate this, and it is his first priority.



From everything I've heard about that, it seems like WB let him do what he wanted with that property. He wrote it and is directing it and it's being described as "a complete reboot" versus the previous film. Obviously I can't speak for him, but I highly doubt he is viewing that as a work-for-hire situation. But even if he is viewing it that way, I expect him to devote himself to it and making it the best film it can be.

Suicide Squad has a release date of August 6, 2021, and he will be expected to do a press tour in support of that film, just as he would for any other film. Therefore, the absolute earliest he could probably devote 100% of his time to Guardians is fall 2021. Even though he already wrote a draft before his firing, I really doubt he'd be able to get the shooting and the effects and everything done quickly enough for summer 2022. There's also the matter of having to realign the cast's schedules, since they haven't exactly been waiting by the phone for Marvel's call since the original filming dates were abandoned.

If Disney is open to using a non-summer date for it, it could maybe go in November 2022 where Doctor Strange and Thor Ragnarok went. But as of right now, the dates Marvel has staked out for 2022 are February 8, May 6 and July 29. I just don't see 2022 being very likely. I think it's far more probable that they are looking at this as the summer kickoff film for 2023, whether that ends up in April like the last two Avengers or in their more traditional first weekend of May slot.

Would I like to see it sooner? Sure, but I don't want him to rush it at all. If it ends up being 2023, I'll wait.

Right, Summer 2022 wouldn’t be possible if he is not able to start production until after the theatrical release of Suicide Squad. If that is the case, then a late 2022 is possible but Summer 2023 would be much more likely.

My hope is that if he is starting production of Suicide Squad in the Fall of this year then he will be done working on it, without rushing, by the end of 2020. I can’t see any reason why he’d still need to be working on the film through mid 2020. It is very common to see the production start date for major films to be roughly a year (maybe 14 months) before the scheduled release date. Preproduction is another thing, but once production starts most movies are ready for release in about a year. Captain Matvel, for example, started filming late January of last year. So that was about 13 months.

If he can be done with Suicide Squad by the end of 2020, I don’t see why he couldn’t start production of Volume 3 in early 2021, even if he has to schedule a 1-2 week press tour for SS in July/August. Wouldn’t it be weird if he was done making SS by December of 2020 but he couldn’t start working on anything else for another 7 months because he needs to do some press for a couple of weeks?

This assumes that Suicide Squad doesn’t require more production time than a typical film. I expect films like Guardians and Avengers and Star Wars to require more time for post production because of the visual effects, but I don’t think that is likely to be the case for something like Suicide Squad.

The variable I don’t have a good grasp on is the preproduction period. I’m assuming the script is ready to go. He completed the script in July of last year. That may have been his final version, or it could have still required polishing. But it is the script Disney has said they were using since last Fall. The rumor is that Disney met with Gunn secretly months ago to set this right, so if it required any further polishing I’m sure he’s already done that.

The rest of preproduction (production design, set building, costuming, casting, scheduling, etc...), everything needing to be worked out before filming can begin, is something that I’m not clear on the typical time requirements. But I believe that is not an insignificant amount of time. Probably at least 6 months? If they couldn’t start preproduction until early early 2021, then he probably couldn’t start filming until after SS is released anyway. Would it be possible for preproduction to start mid 2020 while Gunn is still working on SS? Is this something for which the heavy lifting can be done by Feige and his team at Marvel Studios with Gunn peripherally involved? Or would he need to be so hands on during this period that it couldn’t be started while he was still working on something else? That’s something I’m not not clear on.

Seems like a lot of things would have to line up perfectly for May 2022 to happen. Doesn’t seem impossible, but certainly less likely. Late July 2022 would be more likely if comes out that year. Spring/Summer 2023 is probably the most likely because it seems “easiest”, but like I said I’ll keep my fingers crossed for 2022 because I think it is at least a possibility. We’ll probably get more info later this year from Marvel about their future plans after Endgame and Far From Home have been released.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Wouldn’t it be weird if he was done making SS by December of 2020 but he couldn’t start working on anything else for another 7 months because he needs to do some press for a couple of weeks?

Good point. I think that depends on how involved in post-production he would need to be on Suicide Squad, and how much pre-production can be done without his full attention on Guardians. Using your Captain Marvel example, obviously they were done shooting last year, but when was the final edit completely locked and delivered to Disney?

I get that we all want to see it sooner rather than later. However, Marvel has no motivation to rush this. They have enough other projects in the pipeline -- even just the ones we know about -- that they can rest Guardians for a while. It appears that resting Guardians was their plan when Gunn was fired, and now that he's back, they can still do that.

Projects that we know are in development because people have been hired include:
- Black Widow
- The Eternals
- Shang-Chi
- Black Panther 2
- Doctor Strange 2

Plus, I fully expect Ant-Man 3, Captain Marvel 2 and a third MCU Spider-Man (with Sony) are going to happen; it's just a matter of when. Spider-Man has been going every two years rather than the three-year standard between most of Marvel's projects. Therefore, we can probably expect to see him again in 2021. If they stick to 3 years, Black Panther would also be 2021. Because of Infinity War and Endgame, Doctor Strange will have had a longer period between his first two solo films than any other character in the MCU, but I would think they'd also want to get him after Endgame sooner than later, so he can't be ruled out for 2021 either.

Maybe Black Panther goes four years and ends up in the February 2022 slot? It is the same slot they used to great success last time.

Anyway, there's more than enough here to keep audiences occupied while the Guardians take a break. Because they featured heavily in Infinity War (and probably Endgame also), it won't even feel that long. I would err on the side of caution; the Guardians films are my favorites in the whole MCU lineup, and I would rather wait for it and have it be good than have it be rushed in any way.

Ten years from now, when Guardians 3 is next to the other two shelves, no one will care if the wait between films was long, but people will care if the third movie is below par because they rushed to make a date.