If you were a fan of movie Guardians of the Galaxy and were hoping to see the story continue in the upcoming animated series, it looks like you're going to be disappointed.
We previously reported that Disney XD is airing a Guardians of the Galaxy animated series in 2015. Last month Stephen Wacker, Marvel's vice president of animation, told The New York Times that the series would "pick up where the movie left off.”
It looks like that's not quite true though according to James Gunn. The director of the movie told Slashfilm that the series is completely separate from the movie. "It’s totally separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and whoever said that, it pisses me off," Gunn said.
It's possible Wacker just meant that the show will roughly pick up around where the characters are at the end of the first film, all gathered together and going on a new adventure. But his quote definitely lead a lot of fans to think the show would essentially fill in some story between the first and second movies, serving almost as a Guardians of the Galaxy 1.5. Now we know for sure that the show will be its own entity completely.
The animated series is clearly meant to remind us of the movie though even if it isn't related on a plot level, as we can see in this early footage showed at Comic-Con this year.
Marvel has released a number of animated series on Disney XD recently including Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble. These have also been unrelated from the films, and so it makes sense for Guardians of the Galaxy to be the same way, even if the initial Stephen Wacker quote was a bit unclear about that.
Guardians of the Galaxy opened earlier this year and was a pretty incredible success, rocketing to #1 movie of the year and making $768 million worldwide. The film will be released on DVD and blu-ray on December 9th.
image courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com