James Gunn nearly scrapped original “Guardians” teaser

Trailers are big business in Hollywood these days with teasers, teasers of teasers, teasers of teasers of teasers ramping up expectations amongst audiences. But for the filmmakers, the world of trailers can be a stressful process, with every inch of footage dissected and discussed by the waiting public.

One such filmmaker who has enjoyed both success and stress with introducing trailers in James Gunn, director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and its impending sequel. His new writer/producer effort, The Belko Experiment, debuted its first trailer this week and a new Guardians 2 trailer due very soon. On which trailer was easier to produce, Gunn was in no doubt as he spoke to Heat Vision/The Hollywood Reporter:

“Guardians is the harder one. With Belko, the premise is what people have to buy into,” Gunn said Wednesday night at a launch party for the trailer… With Guardians, people really go through every single little shot and try to figure out what the movie’s about. And there’s a lot of mysteries in Guardians 2.”

With Belko, the trailer is a way of getting an audience excited and interested in it without much prior knowledge, but its a completely different story with Guardians and Marvel, with Gunn talking at length with the studio about just how much they want to show the audience:

“You can show all sorts of stuff happening and it doesn’t really give away who lives, who dies, what the outcome is, what the mystery is… With Guardians, it’s such an emotional and physical journey, going to all these different places. It’s like, ‘God, do I really want to show this planet we go to in the middle of the movie? … Those are always hard choices to make.”

In a strange turn of events, Gunn also revealed that the first Guardians teaser trailer from 2014 (which featured classic tune “Hooked on a Feeling”) almost didn’t make it to the screens, saying:

“That trailer tested not very well. We had another trailer that was very cheesy that sold the movie as something different than what it was — that tested a little better… And at the end of the day, the [marketing] guys were like, ‘This is what the movie is. We are selling what the movie is. Not something else.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is released on May 5th, 2017; The Belko Experiment arrives on March 17th, 2017.