James Gunn talks raccoons in Guardians of the Galaxy

So far the Marvel Studios adaptation of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' has remained under wraps, other than a handful of cast announcements.

But the intriguing comic book adaptation has just got a little more interesting, with director James Gunn revealing details of his plans for the show-stealing character, laser-toting mammal Rocket Raccoon.

[Related story: Guardians of the Galaxy adds Walking Dead star]

“I’ve done a lot of studying with real racoons, and we had real racoons come in,” he told Hey U Guys.

“We’ve done photography with them, I’ve played with racoons, and fed racoons, and dealt a lot with real racoons to get some of the behaviour down, because it’s really, really important to me that Rocket Racoon, who is the heart of the movie, is not a cartoon character, it’s not Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers, it’s a real, little, somewhat mangled beast that’s alone.

“There’s no one else in the universe quite like him, he’s been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine.”

Gunn, already the helmsman of a brilliantly off-beat take on the superhero genre in the form of 'Super', then went on to talk about the casting of Chris Pratt as the film's lead, playing Guardian leader Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord.

“I was very specific that I wanted it to be somebody really extraordinary,” he said. “I really had Robert Downey Jr. in mind a lot. You had this guy who came in and he inhabited Tony Stark, when you first saw Tony Stark he blew your mind, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. I knew that I needed somebody to blow my mind like that.

“We saw a lot of very famous guys for the role, a lot of very well-known people, and very, very good actors. We saw a lot of good performances, but it wasn’t until Chris came in and he read and I was like, ‘oh my god’, this guy has his own, very particular, amazing take on the character that blew my mind, blew me away.

“Then I thought, this is the first guy I could see sharing the screen with Robert Downey Jr. and giving him a run for his money.”

He later confirmed that Zoe Saldana will indeed be playing Gamora, and that the actor playing Rocket Raccoon will be announced in the coming weeks.

Also on board are 'The Walking Dead' star Michael Rooker as Yondu, and WWE star Dave Bautista as Drax.

Filming is set to start in June, with a release slated for August 1, 2014.