By Brent McKnight | 6 years ago

Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t even open until Friday, but that’s not going to stop Marvel from letting us know that the franchise has a future in their ever expanding universe. Not only did they confirm that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is happening, with real live release date and everything, they also announced that the strange collection of deep space outlaws will also get their very own animated series.

By all accounts, the Marvel panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con was a pretty damn good time. They screened footage from The Avengers: Age of Ultron, revealed some details about the characters in Ant-Man, but there wasn’t a ton of breaking news. During a Guardians clip, director James Gunn and star Chris Pratt (Star-Lord) launched into a bit where they started joking about all the trouble they would get into if they just went ahead and told everyone that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 has already been greenlit and had a release date?

Then the screen went black, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” started playing, and the Guardians logo appeared, with a “2” scrawled over the top. Below was the 7.28.17. So not only has the film been approved, it’s already been scheduled. Now we know what at least one of those eight heretofore-untitled Marvel movies is going to be. We already figured that one of them would be a Guardians sequel, the movie is tracking for a $60 million opening weekend and has gathered nothing but rave reviews—I saw it recently, and it is as good, if not better, than we all hoped it would be.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The other day, Gunn’s Guardians writing partner Nicole Perlman revealed that Gunn would both write and direct the sequel. While that part wasn’t officially confirmed, the fact that he was directly involved in the announcement seems to indicate that he’s going to be involved. And he damn well better be, Marvel really hit the jackpot pairing up Gunn and the Guardians, the high action and sarcastic humor are a perfect match.

You can tell that Marvel is already anticipating that they have another big hit on their hands, and are trying to spread the new brand across all of their platforms. During the Marvel Animation panel at Comic-Con, they announced that Guardians of the Galaxy will be the next addition to their slew of animated shows. Accompanying the announcement was a short trailer.

The collection of characters including Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot is tailor made for a cartoon. Not only are there tons of crazy creatures and fantastic worlds, and if this follows the pattern laid out by the movie, the humor should translate well. This show joins their slate of existing show that includes Avengers Assemble, Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., and Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors.

There are no more details on when we might see Guardians the Galaxy the animated series (maybe this fall?), but Guardians of the Galaxy the movie opens everywhere August 1. Go see it. You won’t be disappointed.