Before we get to the news, let’s state up front that the following information is still technically a rumor. Actually, it’s a composite of multiple rumors. That said, everything here is less “fanciful concept” than “idea that is almost certainly true, yet lacks official confirmation,” so any grains of salt you feel the need to swallow before reading need not be unreasonably huge.
That said, here’s what we learned this morning: Disney, parent company of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, has announced that an unnamed Marvel superhero movie scheduled to debut on August 1, 2014 will instead see theaters on May 16, 2014. Though Disney’s announcement was quite coy — in sum it reads “unnamed film has new release date” — Deadline (and the rest of the ‘net) believes this film to be the movie based on Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy superhero team that we discussed last week.
“Now sources tell Deadline that this film is the intergalactic superhero team Guardians Of The Galaxy coming to the big screen,” Deadline states, before offering solid evidence that the claim is legit: We just don’t know about any other upcoming superhero films Marvel/Disney might have in the works.
On their already established superhero front, the studio is very busy right now: Disney/Marvel announced in May that there will be an Avengers sequel. Iron Man 3, directed by Shane Black, and currently shooting, is set to be released May 3, 2013. Thor 2 is scheduled to come out on November 8, 2013. There also is another Captain America, this time helmed by the Russo brothers and set to come out April 4, 2014. With that timeline and Marvel’s habit of teasing forward in their movies, Guardians Of The Galaxy would be well positioned for the summer of 2014.
While we can’t speak to the legitimacy of Deadline’s claim that the Guardians will be throwing down with Thanos, we like that idea as a relatively simple way for Marvel Studios to introduce the mad god to the world before the firm figures out some way to have Thanos battle Tony Stark et alia in the imminent sequel to The Avengers. Of course, is all of that is true, then it seems unlikely that we will see The Avengers 2 any earlier than the summer of 2015. Sad, no?
