Rumor: Marvel Is Already Planning Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Animated Series

[RossaLincoln]

Rumor: Marvel Is Already Planning Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Animated Series

The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise will apparently feature large in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Three.

If a rumor making the rounds today can be trusted, Disney and Marvel are definitely expecting Guardians of the Galaxy to be yet another huge hit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Citing "a reliable source," JoBlo claims it has received solid confirmation that the studio has already slotted 2016 for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, possibly in May.

What makes this rumor juicier is that a different source has apparently confirmed an animated series based on Guardians is also a go, and will debut on Disney XD in the fall of 2015.

Centered around the character Star Lord, played by Parks and Recreation's Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy is going to be a Sci/Fi action film much closer in spirit to something like Star Wars than Iron Man [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131029-Marvel-Reveals-Official-Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-Synopsis], with only tentative links to the MCU as it has existed to far. Yes, audiences generally eat that stuff up, and footage shown by director James Gunn at Comic Con 2013 received tremendous response from fans. But almost no one outside of dedicated Marvel fanboys have ever heard of the Guardians comic series. If Marvel is already planning a sequel, that says a lot about the studio's faith in the completely untested franchise.

Marvel has consistently hinted that there are plans afoot for Avengers 3, plans widely assumed to involve the villain Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Gauntlet, thanks to his appearance in one of the stingers for 2012's The Avengers. Thor: The Dark World [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/8398-Thor-The-Dark-World] went further, with a stinger that (spoiler) made the Infinity Gauntlet plot official, and tied it directly to Guardians of the Galaxy.

Needless to say, take this with a huge grain of salt until we see if Guardians is a hit or not. We've reached out to Disney for comment, and will update this post with any additional information.

Guardians of the Galaxy is set for release August 1, 2014.

Source: JoBlo [http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/exclusive-what-will-one-of-marvels-phase-3-films-be-in-2016]

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[Guffe]

Well I guess Marvel/Disney make enough money, that even if the first one isn't a big hit, and they want to fully go through with the continuity things, they would still have to make a second one?

I don't think these guys are making one movie after another, I think that since we got the first avengers movies (the solo ones) that they've been planning this big thing for a long time, even having a pretty detailed silver lining in the stories / villains / other stuff.

Then when they noticed their movies got big --> pull through with the whole plan!

I doubt if 1 or 2 of their movies fail, I guess it will closer to 20 movies when they finish, it won't be such a big deal for them...

 

[LavaLampBamboo]

I can totally see the doing this for the animated series at home. Guardians are team of superheros, and that sort of thing sells like hot cakes. They've already got animated series based on Avengers and Hulk, so Guardians makes perfect sense.

 

[Gxas]

I'm just waiting for Avengers 3 to literally be Thanos vs every single Marvel hero shown in phase 1, 2, and 3, as well as the Netflix shows and Agents of Shield.

The amount of money spent on the actors alone...

It could probably pay off the US national debt twice over...

 

[Therumancer]

To be honest I think the risk here is being understated. I think the guys producing movies have realized that a lot of this "obscure" comics stuff isn't all that obscure, and has a bigger following than they realized. Simply put you don't need to be a "fanboy" to know who "The Guardians Of The Galaxy" are despite the old logic.

It seems to be a case where from a business perspective the guys looking at these IPs have largely looked at the actual comic book sales figures. They haven't bothered to consider how many people on average are going to real your typical comic or TPB. Especially with the expanding price of print media, which has been going on for decades, you wind up with situations where comic books tend to be passed around between a lot of fans, there being a lot more readers than collectors. Back when I was much younger, in the late 1980s and 1990s I used to play Paper and Pencil RPGs with a lot of people who were in the Navy, or in college. Most of the guys I hung out with tended to be big comic readers, but being in the Navy couldn't take a lot of their stuff with them when they went out to sea, or had to be stationed somwehre for a few months, this tended to mean that the various places we gamed (different naval housing units, one guys trailer, student housing, etc..) would accumulate tons of comics being left there and abandoned and people coming in and out would catch up with them or whatever. As a result for a while I read almost everything there was, as did a truly staggering number of people who weren't even gaming and would just borrow or drop off things in various places to return the favor. Likewise I've come to realize over the years is that this isn't as unusual as it sounds in a lot of youth environments. Meaning just from print media there could be dozens or even hundreds of readers per unit sold (just as you also have the collectors who might buy like 5 copies and hide them someplace in plastic to never be seen again to be fair).

Increased technology has also lead to scanning and the like taking off, in direct response to the rising prices. For the most part I've found it kind of ironic how greedy a lot of publishers have gotten with their own digital businesses and wonder why they can't compete since they set things usually along the lines of newsstand prices (which is an entirely different discussion). While not legal, this basically means that you wind up with torrent sites literally carrying entire runs of comics, and there are apparently all kinds of viewers just for reading them (to be honest reading comics digitally makes my eyes feel like they are going to bleed so I've never found this worth messing with). What's more as insane as it sounds fandom properties, including comics, are probably one of the most well documented things on the internet. The source of jokes like how if you look up "Half Life" you'll find more about the video game than science in casual digging, the same could be applied to things like Thor (mythology) vs. Thor (comic character)
I'd imagine quite easily.

The point I'm getting at is that as much as a lot of people like to think that certain things are still "Niche" or "fringe" or "not mainstream" it's oftentimes not true to the extent people think, and I believe businesses which are usually last to pick up on things like this, have figured that out with comics. Far more people know "Guardians Of The Galaxy" for example and a lot of these "obscure" comic characters than want to admit it. Hence, Disney can look at the buzz, the actual knowledge of the IP, and predict a success this early. It's the people considering it a gamble based on an "off the wall" property that kind of have it wrong.

I suspect this kind of thing will continue for a while. For example a lot of people think say "Doctor Strange" is an obscure comic character that few people have heard of. That's really not true, as you hear things compared to him all the time. Now "Darkhawk" or "Slapstick" are obscure comic characters, as would a lot of other characters that showed up in things like "Exiles". As a result you'll likely never see either of those characters get a movie unless they are at some point pulled out because of their relative obscurity as a supporting character at some point and take off. But "Doctor Strange", "The Guardians Of The Galaxy", and others... not that risky. Indeed if anything the big thing about these IPs is that movies and merchandising will probably get them to actually make money off of their fame, far more than their time in print, simply because the number of people who read about and followed them so vastly outnumbered the people who actually purchased the books. Heck the very fact that you have specific fans of Rocket Racoon identifying as "Racooniacs" (as it's own little subgroup) should sort of say something.


This is long enough as it is, but I will also point out that comics are a bigger thing than many people realize. Years ago I was reading an article about symbol recognition globally. People's ability to recognize flags, safety symbols, and similar things. One of the "interesting" thing is that the Superman "S" Symbol and Batman's "Bat" symbol were among the most recognized things globally. A lot of the world population couldn't recognize their own flag (albeit in some cases with good cause due to so many civil wars) but did recognize "Superman" and "Batman" and could actually tell you the basics like what powers Superman has, what Kryptonite is (though not in terms of colors), that Lex Luthor is his enemy, and Lois Lane is his love. Ditto for Batman being Bruce Wayne. While not as high some things like Spider-Man's webbing, the double W for Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern symbol (and Oath), all scored highly. In the US I was actually a little shocked I remember that most people apparently knew more about comic symbols than their own state flag (though the national one wasn't an issue). Of course at the same time it's important to note that these IPs have been around for many, many, decades now. The point is that it still seems to be something of a shock when a super hero movie is a big success, or gets all kinds of attention, when it shouldn't when you consider things like Superman and Batman have become famous on a global level, following from there one shouldn't be surprised that other comic works have achieved far more fame than people want to give them credit for. When you think about it, what's more surprising, Marvel backing Guardians Of The Galaxy pre-emptively as a huge success, or some dude in rural China (other side of the world) or third world Africa being able to tell you about Superman....

 

[Scarim Coral]

It doesn't suprised me that they intend to launch an animated series based on the movie since that what they did with some of the Marvel movies.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

I wish them well, but I question whether or not it'll be all that successful. I'm something of a comic book geek, and even I know basically nothing about any of the characters in Guardians of the Galaxy, and without any name recognition they might want to be a bit more cautious in their planning of sequels and such.

I'm just waiting for Avengers 3 to literally be Thanos vs every single Marvel hero shown in phase 1, 2, and 3, as well as the Netflix shows and Agents of Shield.

The amount of money spent on the actors alone...

It could probably pay off the US national debt twice over...

Unfortunately, not even close. The debt is truly, truly massive.

Let me put things in perspective: the budget for Avengers was $220 million dollars. By contrast, a single B2 Bomber cost $737 million. And the US debt is over 17 trillion.

 

[thiosk]

I'm just waiting for Avengers 3 to literally be Thanos vs every single Marvel hero shown in phase 1, 2, and 3, as well as the Netflix shows and Agents of Shield.

The amount of money spent on the actors alone...

It could probably pay off the US national debt twice over...

Unfortunately, not even close. The debt is truly, truly massive.

Let me put things in perspective: the budget for Avengers was $220 million dollars. By contrast, a single B2 Bomber cost $737 million. And the US debt is over 17 trillion.

Ha! Nothing!

In Cookie Clicker [http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/], I bake over three trillion cookies PER SECOND.

All hail the elder gods

 

[William Ossiss]

I just wish they would go back to continuing the Earths Mightiest Heroes cartoon. It was amazing! One of the better ones I've watched in awhile. We were going to go up against freaking SURTUR next! Then what do they do? Cancel it in favor on something completely different that doesn't follow the story of EMH. Nope, we have Avengers Assemble; which plays closer to the movie universe.

I don't trust Disney to do cartoons justice by giving them full endings instead of leaving the story sitting there to only gather dust.

 

[Tanis]

Hopefully the studio(s) behind the Green Lantern and Tron cartoons will be in charge of making said cartoon.