Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has taken its sweet time in getting here. Foremost, director James Gunn was temporarily removed from the project, but by the time Marvel decided to reinstate him, he’d already joined with DC to make The Suicide Squad. Two years after it was originally supposed to hit theaters, then, the movie is still at the shooting stage. Although, production is about to come to a close.
Gunn himself confirmed the news while conversing with a fan on Instagram. The filmmaker shared a couple of throwback images to production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on social media this Sunday. While the first depicts his mother with Laura Haddock, who plays Meredith Quill, the second offers fans a closer look at a cool background detail that was ultimately eliminated from the sequel — Nathan Fillion appearing on a poster for a Tony Stark biopic, playing Simon Williams aka Wonder Man.
In the comments, one fan asked Gunn if he “had a role planned” for Fillion in Guardians 3. Gunn then responded: “Well if I did it would be far past planned since we only have 8 more days of shooting.”
Given that this post was shared on April 24 that means Guardians 3 must be scheduled to complete production on May 2. That should leave Gunn and his team almost a full year to work on the post-production side of things, as Vol. 3 is due to hit cinemas on May 5, 2023.
Despite revealing this information, Gunn cleverly sidestepped the question of whether Fillion will appear in the film or not. It seems likely, however, given that Fillion is to Gunn what Bruce Campbell is to Sam Raimi and typically cameos in all his movies. Just one more year until we get to find out for sure.
In the meantime, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special — which might actually be even better than Guardians 3 — arrives on Disney Plus this December.
