If you spend enough time reading interviews with writer-directors, you may find yourself wondering how big a role music plays in the creative process. Hollywood is littered with movies that were written under the influence of a particularly strong playlist; filmmakers who have been given control over every aspect of production, from screenplay the final cut, can sometimes appear to be writing to the music that influenced them along the way. That’s one of the beautiful things about the work of James Gunn. Not only does he exhibit a delightfully eclectic taste in ’70s and ’80s music, he often finds ways to bring those songs directly into the action of his Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

So when someone asked Gunn on Twitter yesterday (via Heroic Hollywood) if he’d already begun the process of picking out songs for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, his answer probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It’s not a matter of whether he has enough music to fill a movie, but whether he’ll have enough movie to match all his music. Here’s Gunn’s response:

The real important takeaway here is that Gunn is working diligently on his next Guardians film, even if it just means putting together a wishlist of songs he’d like to see in the next movie. And there’s actually some financial considerations to what he chooses! The first film introduced younger audiences to ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ while the second movie opened strong with ELO’s ‘Mr. Blue Sky’; if you don’t believe the impact these movies have had on their musical awareness, do a search on Google Trends for both song titles. You’ll see a tremendous spike in searches around the opening weekend of both movies, suggesting that in addition to being a beloved filmmaker, James Gunn is quite the hitmaker, too. Recording studios? Maybe you should be paying Gunn to use your songs, not the other way around.

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