Looking at James Gunn’s CV to date, Guardians of the Galaxy seems like a big leap in a very odd direction. As a writer, he may have flirted with mainstream Hollywood, penning two Scooby-Doo movies, and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, but relatively speaking, they were small scale projects.

Meanwhile, as a director, his last two movies combined (we’ll forget about that segment in movie 43) probably cost less than the catering budget of Guardians of the Galaxy, and their quirky, dark sensibilities meant neither movie found a massive audience, no matter how excellent they were.

And yet, somehow, Gunn found himself with the keys to Marvel’s newest franchise. And in spite of the studio marquee, and in spite of having a budget comprable to the GDP of Anguilla (no, I don’t know where it is either), it still feels very much like a James Gunn movie, full of, as he puts it, “oddballs and outcasts”.

Check out our interview with Gunn below, where he explains how this was possible.

Guardians of the Galaxy is released this Wednesday in the UK, you can see our 4* review here and all our coverage of the movie here including Premiere interviews, more junket interviews and the press conference in full.