Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn recently revealed that had Chris Pratt turned down the role of Star-Lord, he and Marvel would have made an offer to Glenn Howerton. At this point, it's hard to imagine anyone turning down Marvel for any reason except other contractual obligations or scheduing conflicts. Said Gunn, "Glenn came along a little bit later, but there was a good chance that, if I didn't cast Chris, that I would've cast Glenn Howerton in the role." That's interesting considering the long, Long, LONG list of candidates initially in the running for the role. To be exact, Joel Edgerton (Warrior), Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire), Jim Sturgess (Cloud Atlas), Lee Pace (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables), Garrett Hedlund (Tron Legacy), James Marsden (X-Men) Sullivan Stapleton (Animal Kingdom), Jim Sturgess (Cloud Atlas), Zachary Levi (Chuck), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Dark Knight Rises) were ALL candidates for the role of Peter Quill. Neither Pratt or Howerton were on the shortlist, in typical Marvel Studios fashion. Note to all you Marvel Studios superhero hopefuls, if you want the lead role, make sure your name doesn't come up on the shortlist.
Star-Lord aka Peter Quill is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero created by Steve Englehart and Steve Gan, who first appeared in the black-and-white magazine publication Marvel Preview #4 (Jan. 1976). Quill is the son of a human mother and alien father, and eventually grows up assumes the mantle of Star-Lord, an interplanetary policeman. Said Englehart on Star-Lord's origins, "I conceived something very large. My would go from being an unpleasant, introverted jerk to the most cosmic being in the universe, and I would tie it into my then-new interest in astrology. After his earthbound beginning, his mind would be opened step by step, with a fast-action story on Mercury, a love story on Venus, a war story on Mars, and so on out to the edge of the solar system, and then beyond. But – after his earthbound beginning, where I established him as an unpleasant, introverted jerk, I left Marvel, so no one ever saw what he was to become." In a very Green Lantern-esque origin, Quill is a NASA astronaut who is visited by an alien entity called the Master of the Sun, who is looking for a worth human to inherit the mantle of Star-Lord. However, Quill is not chosen by the Master of the Sun, his colleague is selected. However, Quill, stills a spaceship and takes his colleague's place to become Star-Lord. This origin would later be retconned by Brian Michael Bendis, J'son of Spartax - an alien with a human appearance - crashes on Earth and strikes up a relationship with Meredith Quill. A short time later, he leaves Meredith pregnant with his child and with his gun for safekeeping. Ten years later, Meredith is killed by members of the alien race known as the Badoon and Peter Quill sets out on his journey to become Star-Lord.
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