Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special” hits next week, the second of the studio’s ‘Special Presentations’ to arrive following last month’s Halloween-themed “Werewolf by Night”.
These one-offs aren’t just for show either. ‘Werewolf’ is said to have lasting repercussions, and now director James Gunn has spoken up about how his ‘Guardians’ holiday special is helping set up the main third entry in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” film series.
Talking with ComicBook.com about the special, Gunn says it’s useful to view in order to fully understand next year’s mainline sequel entry. The reason being is that it gets a lot of the setup work done ahead of the movie so the film can hit the ground running:
“You’re obviously gonna learn a lot about where the Guardians have been in the past few years. You know, you’re gonna see how they now inhabit Knowhere.
They’ve got a new ship called the Bowie. They’ve got a dog [who] is part of their crew now who has telekinesis named Cosmo… and then there’s a couple of bigger pieces of spoiler-y lore.
You’re gonna learn all of those things. In a way, the ‘Holiday Special’ was a Trojan Horse for me to sneak in stuff that becomes important in ‘Vol. 3,’ so I don’t have to spend a lot of time at the beginning of that movie explaining it.”
Gunn also tells THR that by shooting this simultaneously with the third film, he was able to get a bigger look than what the special would otherwise have been budgeted for, saying:
“We were able to utilize those sets that we had the money to build for Vol. 3, in the special. We otherwise wouldn’t have had that type of money to build these million-dollar sets.”
The “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special” will debut on the Disney+ service on November 25th.
