One of Marvel’s highly anticipated movies Guardians of the Galaxy hits theaters this week, but the studio has gone onto announce a sequel to the yet to release feature, adding enormous pressure on the superhero movie, now franchise.
Writer and director James Gunn confirmed the news on Saturday via Twitter: “Yes, I’m writing and directing the sequel to #GuardiansoftheGalaxy … But first go see the first one out next week!”
The sequel is set for a 28 july, 2017 release worldwide.
This comes as a big surprise since, just this month, Marvel announced plans for six other new films. It was expected that the studio would perhaps announce a few of those titles during its Comic-Con presentation on Saturday night, but only one name was revealed: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2.’
The announcement was made at the Comic-Con event in San Diego during a discussion about another of Marvel’s franchises, the Avengers.
Josh Brolin has been confirmed to play super villain Thanos and will feature in both Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
Guardians of the Galaxy centers around Peter Quill, played by Chris Pratt, who joins up with a group of misfits, including a raccoon, to save the universe.
Teaser footage from the sequel to Avengers was shown and included Hulk fighting a giant robot, Thor grabbing Tony Stark by the throat and a close-up of Captain America’s shield split down the middle.
The next Avengers film is to be released in 2015. It’ll welcome Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen to the franchise as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. It’ll once again be helmed by Joss Whedon.
The villain in Age of Ultron is to be played by James Spader.
In 2012, Avengers became the fastest film to cross the $1 billion (Ł590 million) milestone at the global box office.