James Gunn 'Guardians Of The Galaxy 2' Update: Story Done, Won't Repeat First Film, Deeper Characterizations, Spin-Offs

James Gunn knows exactly what's going to happen in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. He just hasn't written it yet. To help promote the December 9 Blu-ray release of Guardians of the Galaxy (which you can read more about here) the director offered some intriguing updates on his next film, Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Gunn said "the story is written and that's it" in regards to the film, so there is no script just yet. But he did say that he didn't want to repeat what made the first film such a success, the film would delve deeper into each of the characters (and maybe even include some back story) and he feels liberated because he feels the franchise's role in Phase Three isn't dictated by The Avengers. Plus, he teased that the series might not continue in a third film, contrary to previous rumors.

Read the James Gunn Guardians of the Galaxy 2 quotes below.

Though the script has yet to be written, Gunn was pretty confident in what he does and doesn't want to do with Guardians of the Galaxy 2. In a small Q&A, he first talked about the story's role overall in Phase Three:

Who knows how much we've influenced Phase Three but one thing is the Guardians aren't back seat to The Avengers. Captain America, Thor, those other movies, they do really support The Avengers and I think take a back seat to The Avengers. The Guardians are their own thing. The cosmic side of the universe is its own thing. And because the movie was so successful, it was more successful than Iron Man was, that changed the way other people looked at it but I still look at it the same way.

Later, Gunn was asked about what he was focusing on moving into the sequel:

I think the main thing with moving on is we can't just repeat ourselves. We can't just say "Okay, well let's start with something sad and shift into something really happy with some music and let's have the Awesome Mix work in exactly the same way only with songs from the 80s instead of the 70s." All of those things, that doesn't interest me. For me the shift is really about getting to know the characters on a deeper level, knowing them more intimately and uncovering facets of those characters that make them more real to us. At the center of what works about Guardians is that people like the characters.

So the follow up, would the sequel delve into back stories?

Yes. I mean more deeply into the characters themselves and who they are, how they work and how they think. What their flaws are, what their strengths are. They're a much more flawed group than The Avengers. They have major major issues.

Finally, he admitted in developing the first film, he was thinking about the larger Marvel Cosmic Universe as a whole, not just the Guardians. But that those thoughts don't necessarily mean he's thinking about Guardians of the Galaxy 3, as was widely reported:

There was a big rash of "James Gunn Was Thinking Of Ideas For Guardians of the Galaxy 3." I don't think I really said that. What I said was "I had ideas for Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I knew what I was going to do for that, and I had ideas for beyond that." That doesn't necessarily mean Guardians of the Galaxy 3 because there are a lot of different characters in this movie that could go in a lot of different directions. And some of the characters I'm most interested in aren't necessarily Guardians of the Galaxy.

Oooh, cryptic. A Yondu spinoff movie? Collector and Howard the Duck's Wild Adventure? I guess we'll see what Gunn means after May 5, 2017 when Guardians of the Galaxy 2 hits theaters.