Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was all but a given, but Marvel have confirmed it and given it a release date.

We were at Marvel’s Comic-Con panel and live blogged the entire event. Included in the event were updates on Ant-Man including the confirmation of Evangeline Lilly’s casting and who she and Corey Still will be playing, a large Avengers: Age of Ultron panel which included the first footage of the upcoming movie, and “one more thing”.

Marvel’s “big surprise” of the night was the announcement of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise after James Gunn pretty much revealed that it would happen a week ago.

Tonight Marvel confirmed that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will be released on July 28, 2017. Gunn will return to write and direct the sequel.

This is a great move by Marvel given how positive the reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy has been. The initial response from the first screening was incredibly positive, and the movie currently holds a 100% rating on the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with 25 reviews filed.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will be released on essentially the same weekend as its predecessor, a move that will probably be a smart one for Marvel. Here’s how their release calendar currently stands:

August 1, 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy
May 1, 2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron
July 15, 2015: Ant-Man
May 6, 2016: Captain America 3
July 8, 2016: Untitled
May 5, 2017: Untitled
July 28, 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy 2
November 3, 2017: Untitled
May 4, 2018: Untitled
July 6, 2018: Untitled
November 2, 2018: Untitled
May 3, 2019: Untitled

We predicted that Marvel would slate Guardians of the Galaxy 2 one slot earlier in their prime May 2017 slot, but they didn’t do that. It will be interesting to see how the rest of their calendar fills out.

We thought that Marvel would announce some of their other upcoming releases tonight too, but it’s likely that they just don’t have those movies locked into those dates due to various contracts.