With casting currently underway on Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, we it got on good authority that Basil Sandhurst aka THE CONTROLLER will be one of the bad guys in the upcoming film.

I’m told that The Controller will act as Thanos’ main henchman and ambassador. Does this also mean that we will be seeing Thanos himself in the film? With Guardians Of The Galaxy being the last standalone Marvel film that leads into The Avengers 2, I think that is a strong possibility.

A supervillain in the Marvel Comics, The Controller specializes in mind control and is frequent foe of Tony Stark. In researching The Controller, he has interacted with many characters that already exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tony Stark for starters, Shield agents Jasper Sitwell and Maria Hill, and Iron Man 2 baddie Justin Hammer.

Michael Rooker, who was fantastic on his now-completed run on AMC’s The Walking Dead, has been cast as one of the four founding superheroes of Guardians Of The Galaxy, the Marvel Studios pic that James Gunn is helming. He will play Yondu, who in Marvel lore was a game hunter of a primitive tribe native to Centauri IV, the first planet system to be colonized outside of the Sun’s solar system. He eventually bands together with fellow fugitives to form the superhero team. Chris Pratt already has been cast, and Disney plans an August 1, 2014 release date. Rooker, whose film credits include Mississippi Burning, Days of Thunder, JFK, Tombstone and Jumper, is repped by Kritzer Levine Wilkins Griffin Nilon Entertainment.

Saldana as a seductive alien badass? No brainer. But Pratt, known for the dim-but-lovable Andy Dwyer on TV, was an unusual a choice for a superhero. (Of course, so was Michael Keaton as Batman once upon a time …)

“He’s a hilariously frumpy, doofy guy in Parks and Rec, and he’s an incredibly kickass ripped guy in Zero Dark Thirty and that’s pretty awesome,” says Feige. “He’s going to need that in Guardians. That’s a big range right there.”

Still, finding the right actor wasn’t easy. “We did a lot of auditions, a lot of screen tests, just as we did for Thor, just as we did for Cap,” Feige says. “[Pratt] was hilarious, he was moving, he was … you bought him in the early versions of the outfit.”

As team leader both on and off screen, Pratt also helped them figure out who else should join the Guardians. “One of the reasons Bautista got the part was because his banter, and ad libs, and screen tests with Pratt were awesome.”