James Gunn Commits Guardians of Galaxy 2 To Paper, Sends to Marvel

by Brandon Neilan

James Gunn recently revealed his 48 day script writing escapade across social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Entertainment mediums like The Hollywood Reporter, Collide, and Entertainment Weekly quickly picked up the story with the cover title page showing on James Gunn’s verified Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Although no real revelations have come to pass (as of yet), it will be interesting to see — seeing as James Gunn both directed and wrote the first Guardians of the Galaxy films — what the exact theme and which characters will come alive in the sequel to an already epic film franchise.

On October 28, 2014 Marvel did announce that the release date for the sequel had been moved up to May 5, 2017 — with filming to take place in Atlanta, Georgia.

Notice how the actual title of Guardians of the Galaxy is cut off in the picture, proving that James Gunn in his hashtag right containing is splurging his promise #NoSpoilers #NotEventheTitle for you moviegoer hopefuls.

Gunn, on his Prose & Working With Marvel:

Gunn, through his Facebook account has explained his writing style and process many times and doesn't seem to have a problem replying to his many fans’ comments.

FB Fan: Looking forward to the take. A question: Do you write in “scenes” or do you write whatever comes to you and then side notes and so forth? I know there’s no right way to it but I am curious how you go about it. Thanks, James!

Gunn: There was nine months of treatment writing before I even started on the draft. That’s the hardest work in many ways.
MOST of my writing is done while writing a scriptment — which, in this case, took months and months. It’s seventy pages long — the majority of a script, with every beat and even a lot of dialogue. I then turn that into a script, which is written in screenplay format, with scenes, etc. What I’ve been doing the last 48 days is turning the scriptment into a screenplay.

He did state that this was not his normal writing process, but that he needed to finish the script to start work on another film.

FB Fan: How does this kind of thing work for the interconnectivity of things? Does Marvel give you certain story points you have to include before you start writing, or do they read your script first and work with you to include some of their elements? (Assuming all of you haven’t already had a meeting long ago with a Marvel franchise roadmap so you already have ideas of how to include MCU things)

Gunn: I told Marvel what I wanted to do, and they said okay. They gave me nothing. That said, I already know where things are basically going. But the important thing to me is GotG2 only right now — making it a great movie.

When asked by a fan of how much research both the original and the sequel took with this question:

FB Fan: A more serious comment: how much time, on average, did you spend researching the comics in order to adapt the story? (This also applies to GotG 1 as well). Do you have special support from Marvel in that regard? Or do you devote a lot of time soaking up all of comic universe lore?. I have always wondered this about MCU Directors who have to deal with the fact that all these movies are connected and part of the same universe.

Gunn responded:

In the first movie, I reread all the Abnett Lanning stuff and a lot of the really early tales of the other characters, especially Star-Lord (I love a lot of the feel of the early Star-Lord stories — his origin has been retconned a lot over the years). I do occasional research on a character by requesting all of the comics from Marvel, and they send them over in a big book, bound. So I do a fair amount of research, but it’s all to fill out and make better the essential story that I came up with while making the first movie.

Moviegoers and comic book fans alike will feel solace as Gunn has announced the same cast will be partaking in the sequel.

He also suggested we will be seeing Star-Lords father in the sequel.

You can read the rest of the comments here on his Facebook account:

Look for the movie to be released in theatres on May 5, 2017.