CHRIS PRATT REPRISES HIS ROLE AS STAR-LORD IN “GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2”

PRESS RELEASE

Chris Pratt inhabits Peter Quill aka Star-Lord anew in Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (see my non-spoiler review here), as he faces a family issue that he is compelled to resolve—his true parentage. Pratt reprises the role that propelled him into Marvel fandom and leading-man status.

Photo credit: Marvel Studios

Having now saved the galaxy once, the half-human intergalactic adventurer known as Star-Lord is newly famous and keenly aware of it. When the Guardians’ newfound notoriety brings Quill’s long-lost father back into his life, his bond with the other Guardians will be put to the test.

On casting Chris Pratt as Star-Lord/Peter Quill, director-writer James Gunn says, “When I was auditioning Star-Lord the first time around I was looking for somebody who’d come in, do everything that was on the page, do it well, do it in a funny way, but also give that a little something extra that made Peter Quill a little bit of a different character. And Chris came in and did that immediately. Chris is a very unique movie star in that he is a combination of being a big, masculine guy but also a very vulnerable guy. He has a vulnerability that the classic movie stars hint at, whether it’s Humphrey Bogart or Gary Cooper. Chris really brings that to life on the screen, and I think that’s what makes him a truly modern-day movie star.”

For Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy afforded him the vehicle to showcase both his comedic and physical talents in a way that he had not been able to do on film. “What appealed to me the most about this character was the opportunity to add my own personal brand of humor into it,” comments Pratt. “This was something that I knew I could do that was unique to me, and I had been dying for an opportunity to do that. I wanted to do something that was both comedic and physical. This role is a comfortable space to do that. What is so exciting to me is that I can just do the best version of my best stuff with Star-Lord.”

Describing where we find Peter Quill in the new story, Gunn relates, “As you know, the first ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is about Peter’s relationship to his mother and coming to terms with that. The second movie is about Peter Quill’s relationship to his father and his other fatherly figures. Yondu is obviously a fatherly figure to him. And then he meets his actual father, Ego, played by Kurt Russell, who is in a lot of ways everything he wanted. He is coming to terms with things. His feelings of abandonment, how he feels about his real father’s life, which is very different from his own, etc.”

Pratt offers insight on the importance of Peter’s quest to find his true parentage. “Quill is desperate to know who his dad is and dreamed his whole life that his dad was somebody special, somebody important, somebody cool,” says Pratt. “So when Quill finally meets his bigger-than-life father, who’s been searching for him, it fills this giant void that he’s had in his heart his whole life.”

In the course of the film, Quill finds himself reexamining his relationship with Yondu as well. “Of course, he’s always looked at Yondu, who abducted him, as being the guy who threatened to eat him or was hard on him,” Pratt says. “But he learns through the course of this film that the relationship is more of a father/son dynamic than he could’ve ever expected to get from anyone else.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 also stars Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Michael Rooker as Yondu, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Elizabeth Debicki as Ayesha, Chris Sullivan as Taserface, Sean Gunn as Kraglin, Tommy Flanagan as Tulik, Laura Haddock as Meredith Quill, with Sylvester Stallone as Stakar, and Kurt Russell as Ego.

Opening across the Philippines on April 26, 2017, Marvel's “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is distributed in the Philippines by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

CHRIS PRATT IN “PASSENGERS”

Press release

CHRIS PRATT, A DIFFERENT KIND OF GALACTIC GUARDIAN IN “PASSENGERS”

He has firmly secured himself as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading men with smash hits as Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World and The Magnificent Seven. Now, Chris Pratt headlines Columbia Pictures' new futuristic thriller Passengers (read review here) opposite Jennifer Lawrence.

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

“Passengers is about two people who were supposed to be on the trip of a lifetime – the 120-year journey to a new planet – when they get woken up 90 years too early,” says Pratt. “But it turns out there’s a reason they woke up early. They have to solve the mystery of the malfunction, and fix a ship that is quickly failing, if they are going to survive and save the lives of the passengers on the greatest mass migration in human history.”

Pratt’s character, Jim, decides to give up his life on Earth for very practical reasons. “He’s kind of a throwback,” says Pratt, “very much a working class guy. He’s considered a desirable trade, as a mechanical engineer, because he’ll be helping to start a civilization. If something breaks, he’ll be there to fix it.”

When Jim and Aurora wake up 90 years before reaching that destination, those skills kick into high gear. “He’s a problem solver by trade, so he’s trying to figure out how to get back to sleep or contact somebody for help. And then, it turns out that there’s something very wrong with the ship.”

“Chris is very different than Jim,” says Lawrence, who plays his fellow awakened passenger, Aurora. “Jim acts like he’s never really had a girlfriend, and he doesn’t really know how to behave around women; that’s charming and sweet, but it’s not like Chris at all, who’s married and funny. It was interesting to watch him go from Chris Pratt to a shy, insecure, romantic person.”

Director Morten Tyldum says that it was apparent from the beginning that Lawrence and Pratt would be the perfect actors to bring Aurora and Jim to life. “It’s great that they are the biggest stars in the world, but first of all, I wanted to make sure that they were the right actors for these roles,” he says. “I had to get the feeling that they were going to click, that they would have chemistry. They’re very smart people who had a clear understanding of what they wanted the character to do. They really understood the choices, the motivations, the life these characters have to go through – so that made me feel that they really got it.”

“Passengers is an epic, in that it really has everything in one movie,” concludes Pratt. “It’s adventure, it’s romance, it’s a thriller, it’s scary, but it’s emotionally resonant. There are great moments of humor and spectacle.”

In 2015, Pratt headlined Jurassic World, which is the fourth highest grossing film of all time behind Avatar, Titanic, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He will reprise his role of Owen Grady in the second installment of Jurassic World, set for a 2018 debut.

2014 was truly the year of Chris Pratt. He toplined Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which was one of the top three grossing films of 2014 with over $770 million at the global box office. He will return to the role of Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which is scheduled for a May 2017 release. Plus, Pratt lent his vocal talents to the lead character, Emmett, in the enormously successful Warner Bros. animated feature The Lego Movie, which made over $400 million worldwide.

Opening across the Philippines on January 04, 2017, Passengers is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Use the hashtag #Passengers

CHRIS PRATT SEEKS STARDOM WITH “GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY”

Bound-for-stardom Chris Pratt (“The LEGO Movie”) plays a brash space adventurer named Peter Quill, who was zapped into space at the age of nine, in Marvel's “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

 

Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios

The filmmakers’ search for Peter Quill, the leader of the Guardians was extensive. Many actors were considered as contenders for the role but it was Pratt, best known for the role he plays in “Parks and Recreation,” and who was beginning to make a significant mark for scene-stealing roles in “Moneyball,” “The Five-Year Engagement” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” who triumphed. His ability to effortlessly switch between drama, comedy and action, together with his incredible charm, made him not only a great choice but also the only choice. 

 

Says producer Kevin Feige, “We auditioned many actors for the role, and conducted a number of really detailed screen tests, and Chris Pratt, by far just won the part. He was cool, he was sexy, he was ridiculously hilarious in certain aspects—which he has to be—and when he puts on the costume and he puts on the mask and he’s holding his space guns, he is badass and you believe it.” 

 

Director James Gunn concurs: “We had screen tested a lot of people before we saw Chris and then, boom! I knew within a minute of his audition we’d found our guy.”

More a fan of comic-book artwork than the stories as a child, often painting his heroes on his bedroom wall, Pratt was at first reluctant to audition for the role of Peter Quill as he felt he was not in the best physical shape for the demanding role. But it was his performance in “Zero Dark Thirty” that made him re-think the niche he had begun to carve out for himself as the funny sidekick and consider action hero roles. Says Pratt: “People are seeing ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and their response to it was that I was believable as a SEAL Team 6 member, so I spoke with my management and told them I was ready to audition for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’”

After landing the role, Pratt readily accepted the fact that getting into shape was a prerequisite of the job. He was confident that he would be able to do it and the filmmakers were ready to give him whatever support he needed—especially after seeing a photo of Pratt tweeted by his brother taken during production of ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ 

 

During five months of preproduction, Pratt demonstrated his impressive work ethic as he collaborated with, and was closely monitored by, a team of trainers and nutritionists, training for four hours a day, sticking to a strict diet, taking the right supplements and vitamins, all of which he continued throughout the five-month shoot as well. “He worked his butt off every single day and got himself into amazing physical shape,” says producer Jeremy Latcham. “It has paid off in spades because he looks awesome.”

The story is told from Quill’s perspective, and Pratt reveals that he immediately resonated with the youthful aspects of the character he plays. “He’s very much a kid at heart. He’s never known his father, he’s sucked away into space just as his mother dies and is raised by a blue-skinned humanoid [Michael Rooker’s Yondu]. He has spent all his life being told to toughen up and has a false sense of bravado as a result. But deep down he is lonely, and while he’s a guy traveling in space getting to do whatever he wants, he misses his family, his community, and through the course of the story he learns to care again and that there’s more to life than just taking and doing exactly what you want.”

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team--the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits--Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon; Groot, a tree-like humanoid; the deadly and enigmatic Gamora; and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand--with the galaxy's fate in the balance.

Marvel's “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which first appeared in comic books in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #18 (Jan. 1969), stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, featuring Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, with John C. Reilly, Glenn Close as Nova Prime Rael and Benicio del Toro as The Collector.

James Gunn is the director of the film with Kevin Feige producing, and Louis D'Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Jeremy Latcham, Alan Fine and Stan Lee serve as executive producers. The film is written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman. Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" releases in Philippine theaters on July 31, 2014. 

 

In addition to "Guardians of the Galaxy," Marvel Studios will release a slate of films based on the Marvel characters including "Avengers: Age of Ultron" on May 1, 2015; "Ant-Man" on July 17, 2015; and the untitled "Captain America 3" on May 6, 2016.