First synopsis and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ photo features lineup, details

Marvel surprised fans with a photo of the cast and a synopsis for 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Director James Gunn delivered on the likeness to the promotional photo supplied by the studio previously (compare the two below).

Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana,Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel are the lead roles. Cooper and Diesel are obviously lending their voices to the CGI characters: Rocket Raccoon and Groot respectively.

Benicio del Toro’s role as The Collector was teased in the mid-credits scene from Thor: The Dark World. The Walking Dead star Michael Rooker as Yondu and Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser have yet to be revealed.

Karen Gillan plays Nebula with John C Reilly, Glenn Close and Djimon Hounsou also starring.

Guardians of the Galaxy opens August 1, 2014.

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 Peter 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 blanace. Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” is presented by Marvel Studios. The film releases August 1, 2014, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.