Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is just around the corner and at that movie's press junket, a tidbit about a character cut from the story surfaced. It seems that Adam Warlock, one of writer/director James Gunn's favorite characters, was in early story treatments of the Guardians' sequel. It makes sense with Warlocks ties (in the comics) to Ayesha (played by Elizabeth Debicki in the film) and his involvement with Thanos and the Infinity Gems (again in the comics).
However, he was written out of Vol. 2, because Gunn felt his inclusion would be too cumersome:
I love Adam Warlock. He’s one of my favorite characters. In all truth, I wrote an early treatment where I had Adam Warlock as a part…this is your big scoop, because I don’t think I’ve told anybody this… It was Adam Warlock. He was a big part of the screenplay and I realized it was one character too many. And I adored the character. I adored what we had done with him. I think we did something really creative and unique with Adam Warlock. But it was one character too many and I didn’t want to lose Mantis and Mantis was more organically part of the movie anyway. So I decided to save him for later.
In the comics, Adam Warlock was an artificial being created by scientists of the Enclave to be the perfect human being. He was originally simply known as "Him", and was given his by The High Evolutionary. he eventually comes into conflict with the Magus, The Universal Church of Truth, and Thanos. Warlock possessed the Soul gem so of course Thanos was interested in him. Warlock fell at the hands of Thanos… but got better.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that Adam Warlock would be appearing in a future Marvel film. One might guess it would be in Avengers: Infinity War, which features Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet, but he's not. Gunn confirms this:
"He’s not. He’s not in Infinity War. But he will be a part of the future Marvel cosmic universe and a pretty important part of that."
So, will he be in the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie which Gunn was confirmed to be writing and directing this week? Neither Gunn nor Feige would confirm that, but the latter did say:
"If he appears anywhere in the future, it'll be in Guardians."
Well, we'll see then. In the meantime we have a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 movie opening on May 5, 2017 and Avengers: Infinity War on May 4, 2018 to get through…