What Star Wars Means for Guardians of the Galaxy

Today’s announcement that the Walt Disney Company had not only acquired Lucasfilm, but has a trilogy of Star Wars movies plotted out and set to begin in 2015, is a potential game-changer for the entire movie industry but nowhere more than at Marvel Studios.With James Gunn set to direct the studio’s riskiest film yet–a live-action feature based on the relatively unknown property Guardians of the Galaxy that’s set in space and features no recognizable characters (unless they mimic the comics and have Iron Man join the team, of course)–the onus was already on the filmmaker to succeed. But now Gunn, who has never directed anything on this scale before, has a bit of a lightsaber to his head.