James Gunn's Dog Obsession Repeatedly Hindered Production On Guardians Of The Galaxy 3
James Gunn's sci-fi adventure film "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3" takes place on a free-floating space station that was once the head of an ineffable space deity. On board the head, called Knowhere, a wide variety of aliens and creatures live in a cramped complex of apartments, trying to reside as comfortably as possible. Knowhere is also the home to the Guardians of the Galaxy, a loosely associated group of aliens — and one human — who occasionally commit acts of heroism for hire. In the first "Guardians" film, they came into the possession of Cosmo, a Soviet space dog that was salvaged by an unusual being called the Collector. By the third "Guardians," Cosmo could speak through a psychic collar (Cosmo was voiced by Maria Bakalova) and float objects with her mind.
Cosmo's breed is never spoken aloud, but she looks like a labrador or a golden retriever. In other words, she's a cute doggie that you just wanna scruff up an' snoogle and doggie woggie an' what a cute li'l DAWG! WHOOZagoodgirl?
Excuse me. I, like many of us, became distracted by the sight of an adorable animal. Kittens are my primary weakness, but a snuggly pupper has a way of breaking down my defenses as well. It seems that dogs also get to director James Gunn as well, as he was moved to distraction by the on-set dog that served as a stand-in for Cosmo ... and vice versa. The dog "playing" Cosmo was named Slate, and Slate was perhaps a little too affable on set. According to a recent Movieweb interview with the "Guardians" special effects supervisor, Stephanie Ceretti, Slate wanted to play with Gunn when the cameras started rolling.
Slate the Dog
To clarify, Slate didn't appear on screen in "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3." Cosmo was a special effect, realized through advanced CGI. In order to give the special effects artists some visual context, however, Slate did perform as a stand-in for Cosmo, giving a reference as to Cosmo's size, position, and lighting. Fur textures and movements were then recreated on a computer. It is unclear why the filmmakers didn't just hire Slate and skip the middleman, but I'm not the director of multimillion-dollar blockbusters.
But having Slate on set was a distraction for Gunn, and Slate seemed to fall in love with the director. Ceretti, while describing her SFX process, shared the cute factoid that "James loves dogs. So James would start playing with Slate and then by the time we were rolling, Slate was like, 'Oh, I'm gone. I don't know. I want to play.'"
Gunn, meanwhile, is a dog owner. On his Twitter account in 2022, Gunn announced that he had adopted a dog that he named Ozu, presumably named after the masterful Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu, maker of "Tokyo Story" and "Floating Weeds." He adopted Ozu from a pet shelter in Studio City, California called Wagmor Pets, and he briefly wrote a Twitter thread describing the process of selecting him and training him to live in a house. Ozu is a wiry little dog and, given Gunn's affection for Slate, probably well-loved at Gunn's home. It seems that Gunn adopted Ozu while he was filming "The Suicide Squad" in Panama in 2021.
Gunn, sadly, owns no raccoons.