One of the big Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 rumors that never came to fruition was that Nathan Fillion, longtime James Gunn collaborator, would make a cameo. He did film a scene, which ended up deleted, but according to a new post by Gunn today, he was almost in another scene, though he didn’t have lines. Unfortunately, it had to be cut in favor of not slowing the movie down. As it turns out, Fillion was never on set, but appeared in a few fake movie posters that would have been on the side of a theater in the cut scene.

Gunn shared a photo of one of the posters, featuring Nathan Fillion as the character Simon Williams, a.k.a. Wonder-Man, which sparked a ton of fan speculation about Wonder Man’s involvement in the movie after people posted a few photos of the set. The poster Gunn shared looks like a hilarious Steve Jobs-esque biopic about Tony Stark. Take a look:

Gunn also explained in a Facebook post why these posters never made it into the movie:

As many of you know one of my best friends in the world is Nathan Fillion. Along with Michael Rooker and Gregg Henry he's been in every movie I've directed - even as a monstrous, perverted voice in Guardians of the Galaxy. I didn't have a good cameo for him in Vol. 2 - and I wanted to bring him more fully into the MCU at some point, so I didn't want to make him Aakon Guard #2, narrowing his chance of a more substantial role in the future. I really do love the character of Simon Williams/Wonder Man in the comics - a sometimes douchey actor/superhero - and could see Nathan clearly in that role (not because he's a douchebag but because he's great at playing one). But, of course, in a movie set 99.9% in space I didn't really have a place for him. So in a small flash to earth I decided to put a theater playing a "Simon Williams Film Festival," with six Simon Williams movie posters outside. Obviously, from the posters, he's had a run of B movies. Most of them in themselves are Easter eggs of some sort or another. Unfortunately, the small section of the scene where they appeared slowed down the movie and I had to cut the Easter eggs from the film (along with storefronts named after comic book luminaries Starlin, Mantlos, Annett and others). Equally a bummer was that a lot of people took photos of these posters on the day so suddenly every fan site was reporting that Nathan was playing Wonder Man in he movie. He was even the third-billed actor on IMDB!

So that makes two attempted cameos that didn’t make it to the final cut. Oh well. If he’s buddies with Gunn and also Joss Whedon, he’ll make it into the MCU eventually.

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