With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now playing in theaters, James Gunn has officially severed ties with the Marvel Cinematic Universe to finally take up a full-time position as the co-CEO of DC Studios.
The filmmaker has bowed out with a heartfelt threequel that clearly saw him given almost complete creative freedom by Kevin Feige to bow out on his own terms, but the downside is that the studio will be hoping everyone forgets he was initially supposed to be the architect of the superhero saga’s ongoing cosmic expansion.
Prior to initially being fired from Vol. 3, Gunn teases his role in the grand scheme of the MCU would be “shepherding the future of the Marvel cosmic universe,” although Feige was almost instantly sent into damage control mode when he countered those claims by offering instead that “the notion of ‘architect across multiple cosmic things’ was slightly blown out of proportion.”
He did make a point of saying “slightly,” though, which was about the best he could do when Gunn’s exact words following the release of Vol. 2 were that he was laying the foundations “set up the next 10 to 20 years of Marvel movies [and] really expand the Cosmic universe.”
Looking into both the short and long-term future of the MCU, the only productions on the horizon that could justifiably be deemed as “cosmic” are The Marvels and Fantastic Four, neither of which is remotely tethered to either Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy or any other notable properties that exist beyond the stars.
Maybe the plans changed when he was fired, jumped to DC, rehired, and then jumped back again, but it’s fascinating to think of what might have been.
