For a time, it looked like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wouldn't happen...at least not with James Gunn at the helm.
When some old jokes he'd shared on Twitter were dug up (bearing in mind, the filmmaker had already apologised for them), Disney chose to part ways with Gunn and Marvel Studios started making plans to still shoot the movie using his script. That didn't sit well with the cast and they issued a public statement sharing their support for the director.
Thankfully, the House of Mouse eventually saw sense and brought Gunn back to finish his trilogy and the result is one of the best MCU movies of all time.
Earlier this month, we spoke with Rocket and Kraglin actor Sean Gunn about his incredible work in the threequel and asked how it felt when all signs pointed to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 no longer becoming a reality.
"I always wanted to be able to finish this trilogy and the movie, and share it," he recalls in the video below. "There was a time in there when I was like, ‘I guess that’s just it. We have to let it go.’ For me, the hardest part about that was exactly that: it was knowing that this script was finished and that it was so excellent and so emotional and such a great completion of the trilogy."
"The thought that it would never get told and be out there forever, with us never able to do it...was the hardest thing about it. It wasn’t the career stuff; I’m a character actor, I’ll go on and do my next thing. It was not being able to tell a story that should be told. That’s a mini tragedy of sorts, so I’m very, very grateful we got to finish."
Later in our conversation, Sean looked back at the moment he's proudest of in the MCU.
"As an actor, the moment I’m most proud of is probably Kraglin’s response to the Ravager funeral at the end of the second movie," the actor says. "It’s my favourite thing to go back and watch and see what I’ve done."
Sean would also go on to share a particularly special moment he shared with James way back in 2014. "We were on the red carpet when the first movie was coming out. Hollywood Boulevard was shut down, the fans were going nuts, and it was the premiere of the first movie. James walked up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘I think we pulled it off.’ That’s personally a moment I’ll always really treasure."
We'd say they definitely pulled it off.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is now playing in theaters. You can find Sean on Twitter @seangunn and on Instagram @thejudgegunn.