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In a cinematic universe built on interconnected and ever-expanding narrative, James Gunn has given us what might be the closest thing we get to a proper, old school trilogy with his Guardians of the Galaxy films. Sure the Guardians are going to become a bigger part of shared universe when they pop up Avengers: Infinity War, but Gunn has been hard at work crafting a classic sci-fi epic trilogy that follows our lovable gang of space scamps from their origin to a resolute third film, which he has previously said will be the final film for "this iteration of the Guardians of the Galaxy."

With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 arriving on Blu-ray this month, our own Steve Weintraub sat down for a chat with Gunn yesterday and got a couple updates on plans for the third film and how the writing process is going. Gunn said it will be "a little more than year" before the get started on filming and though they haven't announced the release date yet, he knows "when the basic time is." And if you were thinking it's going to be called Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, you're probably right. Probably. The director said that's the plan for now, though he noted things can change.

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Image via Marvel

He also hinted that plans for the original team of Guardians (introduced in a Vol. 2 post-credits scenes) are still a possibility. "There's always discussion with Ravagers -- it would be The Ravagers," he explained. "It's always a possibility. I would be excited."

Asked if's been as easy and natural to write Vol. 3 as he said it was on Vol. 2, Gunn remarked on the unique challenges of scripting what is essentially the third act of his trilogy, promising a lot of answers in Vol. 3.

"It’s been pretty easy. The truth is, the first movie is the first act, the second movie is the second act, and the third movie is the third act so I’m tying a lot of stuff together in the third film. We get a lot of answers on a lot of different things, so doing that in an elegant way takes a little bit of grace and elegance. It’s more challenging in that respect writing the third movie than the second movie."

Gunn also talked about his writing process, which has remained consistent throughout the films and why he puts so much effort into nailing the treatment.

"I do an incredibly in-depth treatment for every movie. I think of writing a screenplay as creating the body of a human being and you’ve got to start with the skeleton, start with the bones, and you create the bones. You take a lot of time because that’s the actual base of the movie and if you screw that part up, later on down the line, you’re going to have a lot of mistakes. So by creating a really strong foundation for the story, that’s the most important thing. So I write a good treatment that’s probably about 70 pages long. It includes photographs and things like that. So that has been the way I’ve dealt with every movie and this one as well."

Stay tuned for the full interview with Gunn. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 arrives Digitally in HD and 4K Ultra HD on Aug. 8 and 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on Aug. 22.

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Image via Marvel Studios
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