Gunn proved he could deliver a hit superhero flick, so evidently all the Marvel Studios bigwigs needed to hear when he pitched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was that Ego the Living Planet would be the father of Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill, a.k.a.
Cut to August 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy was met with near critical acclaim and made nearly $773 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run.
This was a departure from the source material, where Quill is the son of King J’Son of Spartax, but Gunn decided to go a different route with the parentage using one of Marvel’s longtime cosmic villains, with Kurt Russell eventually being cast as Ego.