It’s no surprise that Marvel has been trying to figure out what to do with their movie franchises now that they’ve pretty much milked their A-list characters. There are only so many “Iron Man” movies you can do (we hope) and the comic house is now looking to get their second tier characters on the big screen. As you know, “Ant-Man” and “Doctor Strange” are pushing ahead and last year, chatty Marvel head Kevin Feige hinted at what may be around the corner saying, “I think what Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction have done with ‘Iron Fist‘ lately is exciting. I think ‘Black Panther‘ and Wakanda has some amazing potential to be a feature film. ‘Doctor Strange,’ as you’ve mentioned. There are some obscure titles, too, like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ I think they’ve been revamped recently in a fun way in the book.”
Well, the obscurest of them all, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is moving forward through development according to Twitch. And of all those options, it’s certainly the weirdest choice. The comic revolves around a team of superheroes in an alternate 31st century Marvel universe who have to protect earth from an alien race known as Badoon. At least that’s what it was in 1969. Rebooted in 2008, the Guardians now look after the galaxy with their home base located in a space station named Knowhere (#eyeroll) with a team consisting of Star-Lord, Adam Warlock, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Phyla-Vell, Rocket Raccoon, Groot and Mantis. If you want to know what each of these dudes do, you can look it up.
It’s a big roll of the dice considering no one has ever heard of them and it seems like an even riskier project than “The Runaways,” which was set to be directed by “Raising Victor Vargas” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist” helmer Peter Sollett before being put on hold last fall. And the last superhero to deal with superheroes in space mumbo jumbo was “Green Lantern” and well, you know how that turned out.
But hey, maybe Marvel knows something that we don’t, but pushing ahead on a superhero team with no name recognition? Good luck. D23 is couple of weeks away and we’re sure to have more details then about what Marvel and their new partner, Disney, are going to be up to.