In a recent interview with Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, the sequel’s director reveals new details on Marvel’s new superhero franchise.

Everyone agrees that James Gunn knocked it out of the park with Guardians of the Galaxy. After seeing the receipts, Marvel quickly announced that the director would be helming a sequel which already has a release date set for July 28, 2017.

While speaking with Empire (via Collider), the Guardians director said that he and Kevin Feige (Marvel President) specifically worked out Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt’s character) parents’ storyline before they even begun production on the first film.

Gunn says, “There have been a lot of documents passed around about who Peter Quill’s father is between a select two or three of us. That’s been part of the plan since the beginning, that’s something I had to work out before we shot the screenplay. We wanted to make sure Yondu’s place in everything made sense and it does, so it’s all very specific stuff.”

While comic fans may know that he’s J’son, the Emperor of the Spartoi Empire, the director explains that in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, Peter’s father will be someone different entirely. Gunn says, “It’s definitely not the character who it is in the comics, I’ll say that much.” Which is interesting, since they seemed to make an effort to lay the groundwork for that storyline.

But it isn’t uncommon for Marvel’s writers to adjust storylines to better fit within their MCU, so we can deal with the fact that Quill’s father won’t be exactly who he was in the original storyline.

When asked about whether Thanos will show up in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the director revealed that he would be in the film, but that he still won’t be the main focus of the film because the Guardians themselves are always the main focus. But, we know there still has to be a main villain.

The director says, “Thanos is not the most important thing in Guardians 2, that’s for damn sure. There’s the Guardians themselves and other threats the Guardians are going to be facing that are not Thanos… I think Thanos has been lonely for a long time. He can handle it. He’s used to his loneliness. He’s got some other kids out there. He’s got to look after them. Nebula’s probably the sweetest of them, which tells you what his kids are like…”

We’re definitely interested to find out about these “other threats” that the Guardians will have to deal with, but it is somewhat disapointing that Thanos continues to have such a minor role in Marvel’s films.

Afterall, he was introduced in The Avengers, which was released back in 2012. And we know that Thanos won’t be the main villain in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, as the film’s villain is featured in the title, so when exactly will Thanos come into play?

The Avengers’ sequel won’t be hitting theaters until May 1, 2015, so we’re looking at a minimum of six or seven years between the time Thanos was introduced to the film he’s actually featured in.

Actor Josh Brolin was voicing Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy and it was the first time we’d ever heard him voicing the character as he was cast after the character originally appeared in The Avengers.

We’re excited to see that Gunn is clearly excited about the sequel and seems to have started working on the film even as the first was making waves with fans in theaters over the last two weeks.

Guardians of the Galaxy has opened up many new storylines for Marvel and we expect to see some exciting things from the studio over the next few years.