Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is taking its sweet time getting here. The second movie in the cosmic action-comedy franchise arrived in 2017, and we still don’t have a release date for the threequel, which will conclude the story of Star-Lord and his crew in the MCU. The good news is that we got more from the Guardians in the last two Avengers films and they’ll turn up again in Thor: Love and Thunder. And at least we know that shooting on Vol. 3 will take place this year.
That update comes straight from the director’s own mouth. James Gunn recently interacted with his fans via a Q&A on Instagram and someone inevitably asked him when Guardians 3 would finally enter production. “Shooting starts later this year,” the filmmaker replied simply. This confirms what Drax himself, Dave Bautista, previously said a couple of months ago, that things would get underway in late 2021.
Fans might groan at the wait, but to be fair to Gunn, he’s a busy guy. He’s been working on The Suicide Squad for DC for the past couple of years, with that finally due out this August. He’s also currently knee-deep in production on Peacemaker, a spinoff TV series of the aforementioned sequel that’s coming to HBO Max in January 2022. Plus, when he finally does go back to Marvel, he’ll also be serving up The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, featuring the whole cast, which will be available on Disney Plus for Christmas 2022.
As said above, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will be the final outing for Quill and the others. And Gunn is promising that it’ll be a real heartbreaker, as he’s admitted that he cried a lot while writing the script. He’s going to have to rework his screenplay given the long delay, though, as he explained that he had to map out the finer points of Guardians’ arc with Love and Thunder‘s Taika Waititi.