9 Things The Cast of Marvel’s GOTG On Disney XD Want You To Know

At the beginning of the month Comics Beat received an invitation to check out the first two episodes of Disney XD’s upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy animated series. ICYMI we previously gave our thoughts about the first episode of the series. With the GOTG set to officially debut this weekend here’s nine things the talent behind the show want you to know from our Q&A session.

– Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy on Disney XD was in development a year before the James Gunn blockbuster  Guardians film. When VP of current development Stephen Wacker and Marvel Animation VP Cort Lane saw the movie; a decision was made to change the direction of the animated show to be more inline with what the Marvel Cinematic Universe was going to give audiences.

-Guardians marks a sort of unofficial phase two for Marvel’s animated TV universe. Cort Lane teased more shows are currently in development but could not announce anything yet.

-The pop music we loved in the film makes appearances in the show. Cort Lane was presented with a library of pop songs from the 70’s and had to curate the ones suitable for kids while having the right feel for the show. You’ll hear some familiar “Hooked on a Feeling” along with songs you’re going to wish for in Vol.2. This really shows the group understands the heart of what the Marvel Studios team did with Guardians of the Galaxy.

-The voice cast was chosen before the movie came out. At the time only Wacker and Lane had seen roughs of the movie. They wanted a cast that could capture that feel but not be a cheap knock off. Will Friedle veered his Star-Lord away from doing a Chris Pratt impression. Most of the cast had tried to delay seeing the movie for as long as possible to make sure they gave performances that felt like their own.

–David Sobolov who voices Drax the Destroyer was the only cast member to make the jump from the teams appearance in Ultimate Spider-Man; proving Drax is indeed hard to kill. Vanessa Marshall who voices Gamora was the first to freely admit she went to the comics for research on her character and even provided them to other cast members.

-Unlike most animated shows, this voice casts records much of their dialogue together to bounce off one another’s performance in an attempt to capture that improvised dialogue feel the movie has.

-No Galactus in the show. According to Cort Lane this series draws from the same pool of Marvel characters as the film  but will go deeper into the ocean than a two hour film can. Side note: I stopped trying to figure out the legality of Marvel licensing a long time ago so I’ll just enjoy whatever they give me .

-The group has talked about Howard The Duck appearing but noting solidified yet. Fans of Cosmo will be in for a treat though as the first two episodes feature the Russian space dog.

-Even though the show parallels the film it won’t be slave to the movies. In fact the aim of Marvel animation creative is to keep these shows as accessible as possible for children. What that means is less leniency on continuity between the various Marvel animated series and more stand alone story telling. So a cartoon version of Infinity War might not be in the cards. Die hard fans of the comics will however be treated to a lot more characters from the books as Wacker talked about having lengthy discussions concerning almost every character.

Need more reason to tune in this weekend. Here’s the show’s official awesome mix sounding synopsis:

“Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy” features themes of redemption and the importance of friendships and family, told through a series of riveting sequential story arcs. The series follows the newly formed team that finds a strange artifact keyed only to the DNA of Peter Quill. Upon opening it, Quill unleashes a treasure map leading to a powerful weapon known as the Cosmic Seed, which is capable of giving birth to the next universe. It’s up to the Guardians to find, protect and ultimately destroy the Cosmic Seed in order to keep it out of the hands of those who would abuse its power, from galactic big boss Thanos to the conniving brothers the Collector and the Grandmaster, to a resurrected Ronan, to the ultimate trickster, Loki, in order to save the universe.”