Earlier today at the E3 convention in Los Angeles, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 director James Gunn took a break from his writing schedule to appear on the World Building Panel, which also featured Neil DeGrasse Tyson and was moderated by Chris Hardwick. During this panel, the filmmaker gave a bit of a status update on his Guardians 3 writing progress, teasing that he has already finished the first draft of the treatment. However, he has hit a storytelling snag, and while he didn't divulge any exact details, it seems this issue is still bothering him. Here's what the filmmaker had to say during this panel.

"I'm writing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and I finished the first draft of the treatment yesterday. I'm excited about it. I feel really great about it. But there's one little thing that I had in the first movie. Now, Marvel Canon, MCU, is crazy. There's the 616 universe which is the Marvel Comics Universe, which people get hung up on that canon, and then there's the MCU, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has a separate canon. I did something in the first movie of Guardians where it was in the background but it was distinctly there, and people know that it's there. And I'm like goddammit. Because I have a really good storytelling reason for breaking the canon, and I stayed up last night figuring out if I'm gonna do it or not. I still don't know."

Marvel hasn't issued a specific release date yet, but James Gunn did recently hint that he will spend the next three years working on this Guardians sequel, which could mean this movie will have a 2020 release date. The filmmaker is only on the first draft of his treatment for the movie, not the actual screenplay, so he probably still has quite a ways to go before the story is fully locked in. The director went on to tell the audience at this panel, which was live-streamed on YouTube, what exactly he wanted to change from the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, for this upcoming sequel.

"I'll actually tell you. In the first movie there is the mugshot sequence where the characters go through and they're going through the mugshots and having their picture taken. And the Nova Corps has information about each of the characters coming up on their machinery. Those things are something that your average viewer doesn't see at all. But there's a lot of background I put into those things about who they've worked with, where they are from, what's going on. And it's one of those things that I'm thinking about changing."

These new details will likely have fans scouring back through the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie to try and uncover what detail James Gunn wants to change. This also comes a day after the filmmmaker took to social media and teased the possible inclusion of the Marvel character Quasar in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but naturally he wouldn't divulge any further details about that character's potential inclusion. It is believed that Guardians 3 could be one fo the first Marvel Phase 4 movies, with the studio already setting release dates aside on May 1, 2020, August 7, 2020 and November 6, 2020.