James Gunn fell in love with the real-life Cosmo while making ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’

Cosmo the Spacedog was one of the undisputed highlights of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. First teased in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, she went on to appear in the Holiday Special before being bumped to full member of the team status by the end of Vol. 3.

Despite being a talking telekinetic dog (as voiced by the excellent Maria Bakalova) much of the fun of Cosmo is that she acts like a real dog. The tension between her and Kraglin as he refuses to take back his comment that she’s a “bad dog” runs throughout the movie, and her happy bouncing when he finally acknowledges her as a “good dog” is heartwarming.

But keep that heart warm, as what was going on behind the scenes was almost as adorable as what’s onscreen. Though Cosmo was a CGI creation, there was a real dog named Slate on set to provide a reference to the VFX team. As per ComicBook’s interview with Vol. 3 VFX supervisor Stephane Ceretti, Gunn fell head over heels with this new canine buddy:

“Well, we scanned him, we scanned Slate, we use this fur and everything as a reference. We had him doing some different things so that we could study the way that everything moves and on camera with good quality material. And what I was doing is every time we would have a scene with Slate, with Cosmo, we had Slate coming in, get in front of the camera so we know exactly what he looks like in the light and all that stuff.

Sometimes have him just do a few things, but Slate was really not a dog that we could have used for shooting, that was a beautiful dog. But every time Slate would come, 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 is well-known for his affinity with dogs, currently owning three: a rescue mutt named Dr Wesley Von Spears, a puggle called Lola, and another rescue called Ozu (who was two hours away from being put down before Gunn swept in to save her).

So, with a bouncy and fun-loving Labrador frolicking around the set it’s not surprising that Gunn took the time to play with Slate. Given that Cosmo was such a believable onscreen CGI dog, it sounds like they got their money’s worth.