Speaking with Cinema Blend about The Avengers’ Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, Marvel’s Executive Vice President, Victoria Alonso, offered a little insight into their forthcoming space epic, Guardians of the Galaxy . Confirming when filming will officially kickoff, Alonso comments on director James Gunn and how they plan to bring the gun-toting Rocket Raccoon and talking/walking tree, Groot, to the big screen visually. "Production has already started! Completely. It started months ago and we have an entire team in London already – we start shooting in June. Our director [James Gunn] travels next week and it’s going, baby! It’s a fast train to a beautiful place." Whether Rocket Raccoon and Groot will be fully CG with motion capture, Alonso says, "We’re going to do a combination. You can’t do any motion capture with a raccoon – they won’t let you put the suit on [laughs]. But we will do rotomation, probably, for some of the behavior. Rocket will have his own personality, of course, and clearly we can’t do mocap on a tree, per say, but we definitely will have performers to emulate what James Gunn will lead to be the behavior and the performance. He’s very clear on where he wants to take the characters."
Marvel Studios presents “Guardians of the Galaxy”—A big space epic featuring an unlikely cast of Marvel characters, including Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Groot and Rocket Raccoon, who must team up in order to defeat a cosmic force of epic proportions. So far starring Chris Pratt and directed by James Gunn from a screenplay by James Gunn, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is based on the Marvel comic book series “Guardians of the Galaxy,” first published in 1969 and revived in 2008. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures will distribute “Guardians of the Galaxy” on August 1, 2014, in 3D. In addition, Marvel Studios will release a slate of films based on other iconic Marvel characters including “Iron Man 3” on May 3, 2013; “Thor: The Dark World ” on November 8, 2013; “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” on April 4, 2014; the sequel to “Marvel's The Avengers” on May 1, 2015; and “Ant-Man” on November 6, 2015!