Fri. Feb 7th, 2025

Writer-director James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a critical and commercial success, propelling the creator of oddball indie favorites Slither and Super to cult classic status. His original horror script The Belco Experiment received a green light at MGM with Gunn aboard as producer and he’s currently working on the story for a little thing called Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Gunn has been keeping his fans up to date via social media – as he’s wont to do – and recently offered details on the progress of his big Marvel sequel. Gunn shared via the social media broadcasting app Periscope that his treatment is now complete, and that he now has the first 70 pages of the script mapped out.

Gunn has again taken to Periscope (via CBM) to follow up his previous Q&A with a few more updates, most notably that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will begin production in February of 2016 and will shoot at Pinewood Atlanta Studios rather than London, where the first GoTG was filmed.

The move to Atlanta Pinewood follows the productions of Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War, and the February 2016 start date appears to be in line with Guardians of the Galaxy 2‘s scheduled release in May of 2017. Given the number of British extras and featured players in the first film, the move to Atlanta could bring a distinct change in tone in the background of some scenes.

Gunn has embraced the ever-growing trend among mainstream filmmakers to interact with their fans on a more personal level via social media platforms. But despite his openness, the major plot details of GoTG2 have remained under wraps. We have some basic notions of what the sequel will contain: with the origin story out of the way, we’ll get to know the characters in a “deeper way”; Ronan is definitely dead; there might be a way for Karen Gillan to return as Nebula without having to shave her head again.

The bigger picture is a very large question mark. Gunn’s story for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is original and not based on anything from the comic books, a move which could be considered a “risk,” but considering the first film was perhaps the least faithful of all the Marvel movies to its source material, the broad spectrum of the franchise’s fans are likely to return to theaters.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron releases in theaters on May 1 2015, followed by Ant-Man on July 17 2015, Captain America: Civil War on May 6 2016, Doctor Strange on November 4 2016, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on May 5 2017, Spider-Man on July 28, 2017, Thor: Ragnarok on November 3 2017, Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1 on May 4 2018, Black Panther on July 6 2018, Captain Marvel on November 2 2018, Avengers: Infinity War – Part 2 on May 3 2019 and Inhumans on July 12, 2019.

Source: James Gunn by way of CBM.

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