Guardians of the Galaxy’s Michael Rooker open to playing a new MCU character

In a recent interview with Smallville alum Michael Rosenbaum, when asked about the possibility of Yondu’s resurrection in future MCU films, Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, The Suicide Squad) was quick to turn down the idea of reprising his iconic Guardians of the Galaxy character. He explained that Yondu’s farewell was already one of the best sendoffs in the MCU and he doesn’t really want to spoil that beautiful moment.

However, although Rooker is completely done with Yondu, he is still interested in returning to the franchise as another character. This could be very possible in the MCU as this was the case for Crazy Rich Asians breakout Gemma Chan, who was first seen as Minerva in Captain Marvel before she was cast as Sersi in the upcoming The Eternals.

“No way, I’m dead. I’m dead. My character is dead,” Rooker said. “I would play something else, I wouldn’t mind. I would play something else, but why would I want to play Yondu? Yondu had a wonderful… amazing sendoff that you would ever want in cinematic Marvel history. My god, dude, why do you want to spoil that by bringing the character back now?”

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James Gunn, who wrote and directed the first two films, was originally set to return to direct the highly-anticipated third installment in the space-faring comic book franchise, but following resurfacing of controversial tweets from very early in his career, Disney cut ties with the 52-year-old director and production was delayed until the studio found an A-list filmmaker to replace him. After months of widespread support from fans and the entire cast of the films and f behind-the-scenes discussions between Disney and Gunn, he was reinstated to write and direct the third installment. The House of Mouse will allow Gunn the time to finish production on Warner Bros.’ The Suicide Squad, for which he signed on a few months after his firing.

The first Guardians of the Galaxy was the surprise hit of the second phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, grossing nearly $775 million at the box office and earning widespread critical acclaim for its abundance of humor, emotional story and Gunn’s direction, in addition to its soundtrack becoming the first album of its genre consisting of previously released songs to top the Billboard 200 chart and having sold over 2.5 million copies in 2014 alone. The second film hit theaters three years later and prove to be a near equal success to its predecessor, grossing over $800 million at the box office and earning more acclaim from critics and audiences who continued to praise the performances, direction, soundtrack and story while some criticized a feeling of familiarity in some of the film’s humor.

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The space-traveling team was most recently seen in the box-office breaking Avengers: Endgame and while their next solo adventure doesn’t have a release date, Gunn’s completion of the script last year and with a production set for next year should see the film hit theaters sometime in 2022.