One of the great joys of the Marvel movie universe has been watching the various characters and storylines overlap and converge in surprising and exciting ways. However, fans shouldn't get too excited about a potential 'Avengers' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy' crossover anytime soon. According to Joss Whedon, that isn't happening. (At least not yet.)

If anyone was in a position to shoot down any premature fanboy hopes, it would be Whedon, who wrote and directed 'The Avengers' and is currently hard at work scripting 'The Avengers 2.' Over at Bleeding Cool, Whedon has made it pretty clear that the cast of James Gunn's upcoming marvel space opera will not have a role in his 2015 sequel:

We’re following Guardians at Shepperton [with Avengers 2] but we won’t be swapping cast members. Every movie is its own thing and has to be. Unless I take a lot of peyote and write a very different draft… and I’m not ruling that out.

Five years ago, the mere thought of two distinctly different franchises sharing cast members and taking place in the same larger universe would have been laughable. The fact that Whedon has to shoot down this kind of talk before it even gets started is a testament to the radically different blockbusters landscape of 2013.

But, who knows how it'll shake out in the end? There have been rumors for ages that Tony Stark/Iron Man will somehow be involved in 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and as Whedon jokes above, anything could change at the last minute. Still, the best bet here is to not get our hopes up too much. If anything changes, it'll just be a pleasant surprise.

'Guardians of the Galaxy' is set to open on August 1, 2014 and 'The Avengers 2' will arrive on May 1, 2015.

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