Guardians Of The Galaxy Starts Filming In June

Of all the Phase Two Marvel Studios projects, Guardians of the Galaxy is perhaps the most mysterious. So far, there have yet to be any official casting announcements in regards to the film, even though the entertainment trade press has reported that Chris Pratt has landed the role of Star-Lord. Last week, director James Gunn also revealed on Twitter that he was leaving for London, which Comicbook.com guessed was in order to begin production in earnest on Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, today, we have confirmation from Cinema Blend that was indeed the case, along with a filming start date. In regards to Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios executive vice-president of visual effects and post-production Victoria Alonso said, "Production has already started! Completely. It started months ago and we have an entire team in London already – we start shooting in June. Our director [James Gunn] travels next week and it's going, baby! It's a fast train to a beautiful place." Alonso also offered some insight into how some of the characters will be created for the big screen. When asked if Rocket Raccoon and Groot would be fully CG characters or done with motion capture suits, Alonso said, "We're going to do a combination. You can't do any motion capture with a raccoon – they won't let you put the suit on [laughs]. But we will do rotomation, probably, for some of the behavior. Rocket will have his own personality, of course, and clearly we can't do mocap on a tree, per say, but we definitely will have performers to emulate what James Gunn will lead to be the behavior and the performance. He's very clear on where he wants to take the characters. "