Kevin Feige clarifies James Gunn’s influence on Phase 4 and Guardians of the Galaxy 3

James Gunn played a key role in building a big part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but now that he’s not involved with it anymore, Kevin Feige wants to clarify some things.

It’s been a rough couple of months in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and not exactly due to the events in Avengers: Infinity War. Back in July, James Gunn was fired from Marvel Studios, leaving the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie in limbo. Although the MCU has continued its course since then, truth is the studio hasn’t fully recovered from this shake-up.

Guardians of the Galaxy helped build the cosmic side of the MCU, and Gunn’s presence was felt through the movies outside the Guardians universe. So, with him completely out of the mix without a chance of coming back, what’s going to happen to Phase Four and the “cosmic side of the MCU”?

In an interview with CinemaBlend, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige clarified a few things regarding James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and the upcoming Phase Four. As CinemaBlend also points out, it was announced back in 2017 that the third Guardians movie would make way to a batch of cosmic stories, with Gunn involved in this creative process. It turns out that, with Gunn out, so is any influence he once had in all plans for future Phases.

Feige explained:

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"“His influence was Guardians. It was Guardians. It was his input on Guardians and the Avengers films, as you’ve seen in Infinity War, and on the Guardians 3 script, which we’re still using. So you’ll see that influence. I think online, sort of the notion of ‘architect across multiple cosmic things’ was slightly blown out of proportion”."

Although his Guardians 3 script will still be used, it remains to be seen how many rewrites it will go through and how much of his vision will remain in it. But probably the biggest question will be: how would that “cosmic era” have looked if he was still involved? Instead of shutting all questions and doubts down, Feige probably revived them and brought some more.

There are a lot of things going on at Marvel Studios that need to be addressed and fixed before they properly schedule all of their planned movies for Phase Four. Until then, we can only hope Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes to be without any further complications and that the rest will flow accordingly.