Even so, the latest rumor from Latino Review, which other trades like Variety and THR are picking up on, is that Marvel Studios plans on announcing that their movie based on Guardians of the Galaxy will be ready to fill in that May 2014 slot.
The original Guardians of the Galaxy were introduced way back in 1969, a 31st Century superteam who were fighting a war against the alien race the Badoon. Ironically, we once thought that the aliens in Marvel’s The Avengers might be the Badoon and when we mentioned that to the normally tight-lipped Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, his response was… well, here’s our actual interaction about the aliens in “Avengers” from May:
“SHH: I thought it might have been the Badoon, because at one point, I remember you wanted to make a ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie and I thought, ‘Maybe they were bringing back the Badoon’ even though they hadn’t been in the comics for twenty years.
“Feige: Right. Well, they might be coming back to the comics sooner than you think.“
Of course, he was probably referring to the Guardians themselves, and there have certainly been lots of hints that Marvel wants to make them more prominent as the Guardians have already been introduced in the “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” cartoon on Disney XD and will be appearing in an upcoming issue of the movie-related “Avengers Assemble” title that Marvel Comics has been publishing. That version of the Guardians of the Galaxy (which you can see above in the cover for Avengers Assemble #6) is the more modern version that includes the latest incarnation of Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer and Gamorra from Adam Warlock’s family, Rocket Racoon and Bug from the Micronauts (who has had a movie that’s been in development by J.J. Abrams at Paramount for a couple of years). Latino Review is claiming that Marvel’s other space-facing hero Nova will be a part of the movie.
The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that sources told them Marvel Studios would indeed be announcing the movie at their panel even though they were not able to get a confirmation from the studio itself. Their story says that the script for the “Guardians” movie by Nicole Perlman has been well-regarded and it’s the most ready to go into production with Marvel actively looking for a director to helm it.
The script follows some of the space-faring ideas introduced in Marvel Studios’ mega-hit Avengers and Latino Review states that the Thanos appearance at the end of that movie is meant to lead into the Guardians of the Galaxy movie rather than an Avengers sequel, which is also not unfathomable. The Hollywood Reporter story also mentions that Perlman wrote a script for the Black Widow that impressed Marvel enough to have her do a pass on the Thor screenplay, and she’s also written two more real-life scripts including one about the Challenger space shuttle disaster and a biopic about Neil Armstrong.
The only thing that makes us question this latest story is that less than a month ago, LR were claiming that Black Panther was the missing 2014 Marvel movie, and that story was also picked up by a lot of sites as if it were true, so which is it, boys?
While it seems logical that a Guardians of the Galaxy movie would be more likely than Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and some of the other Marvel characters that had been mentioned to fill that May 2014 space, is the world really ready for a Guardians of the Galaxy movie? Or will this be a super-expensive movie based on characters that are barely known by anyone who hasn’t been reading comics for decades and will be Marvel Studios’ first major misstep?
Let us know what you think below and we’ll finally have confirmation for you in a couple weeks from the Marvel Studios Comic-Con panel.