On Saturday evening at the San Diego Comic-Con, James Gunn took to the stage to discuss his intergalactic adventure Guardians of the Galaxy at the Marvel Panel. After premiering a reel of test footage from the film, the American writer-director coyly hinted that the studio will be announcing some integral voice-related casting in the next few days and that fans will get the news “tomorrow, next week-ish.”
As of now, Gunn has assembled quite the cast for his ambitious venture. While Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista and Zoe Saladana are members of the titular group of ex-convicts and will play Star Lord, Drax and Gamora, respectively, Guardians of the Galaxy will also include Benicio Del Toro, Lee Pace, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker and John C. Reilly. Phew, that’s quite the ensemble.
Nevertheless, there are two fundamental roles that remain vacant hitherto – Namely the lumbering tree-man Groot and the three-foot, gun-toting Rocket Racoon. With this in mind, you’d have to assume that Gunn is referring to one, if not both, of these roles when he speaks of crucial announcements. Worth keeping in mind, too, is that Vin Diesel recently took a meeting with Marvel Studios, which in turn lead to a flurry of speculation attaching him to play Vision. However, could it be that everyone’s favourite gravel-voiced Furyan is to be cast for the role of Rocket Racoon?
We’ll just have to bid our collective time until the studio makes a firm announcement.
What’s certain, though, is that Guardians of the Galaxy; while acting as Marvel’s biggest gamble to date, will also serve to entwine the studio’s sprawling cinematic universe. And one of the ways that Gunn plans to tether these tentpole motion pictures together is by introducing Thanos into his galaxy traversing story.
“We have Thanos. Thanos is the thing connecting us to the rest of the Marvel Universe at this point. And in the future we’ll see what happens after this, but for right now, we’re connected to the rest of the Marvel Universe because we’re resetting the end of The Avengers.”
Guardians of the Galaxy will blitz onto movie screens worldwide on August 1st, 2014. Until then, give us your thoughts about the film and who you’d like to see cast as Groot and Rocket Racoon in the comments below.