James Gunn’s ill words for Donald Trump caused someone to dig dirt upon him which seemed to look bad for his image along with the people who he was involved with. That is what caused Disney to just instantly fire the visionary director of what you may call the most important franchise of the MCU, the Guardians of the Galaxy. While most of the world has raised their voice for Disney to rehire James Gunn, the multi-Billion Dollar studio did not seem to give a second thought upon their decision.
The leak of James Gunn’s reckless and unpleasant tweets caused the firing of him as Disney prevents their brand image more than anything, but the world was not happy about that. They wanted nothing to do with him and he was not even given a chance to prove himself. Those tweets were dated 8-9 years earlier and that is ample time for anyone to change.
From the behavior that we and his co-workers have seen, it is apparent that the man who wrote those tweets was a totally different person from the one who gave us the epic Guardians franchise. He just seems so humble and a very open director who constantly answers to the fans, so you could say that the way he was treated in particular was just harsh.
It all happened in the heat of the moment and it’s understandable that Disney wants to protect their name, but with the verdict of everyone who works for Disney and the entire Marvel fan base apparently, rehiring James Gunn would actually make their brand image better, not worse. When it came to the firing, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was not even consulted about it! In fact even the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger was also not asked for an opinion. It just happened to be a joint decision taken by all the top Executives, and Mr. Iger had to support it anyway.
Here’s what he told The Hollywood Reporter:
“I would say there is a blend of my helping to make the decision to my supporting the decisions that have been made. Roseanne was completely unanimous. We discussed how it would be communicated and when because there were a number of entities that had to be properly filled in, but the decision was completely unanimous. The James Gunn decision was brought to me as a unanimous decision of a variety of executives at the studio, and I supported it.”
Even James Gunn understands Disney’s motivation to do what they did, and he has apologized to the world time and time again. The cast members of his franchise even issued a joint statement in order for Disney to listen, but that did not do any good. There’s a petition going on to rehire Gunn which passed more than 400 Thousand Signatures a while ago, but that doesn’t seem to be helping as well.
Actors like Dave Bautista who plays Drax have raised their voice time and time again, even going as far as writing that he won’t be involved with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 if Disney does not at least use James Gunn’s script! This has even spawned a speculation that the Avengers 4 reshoots will actually kill Drax for Phase 4 and beyond.
Even though Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has been put on an indefinite hold and James Gunn does not seem to be returning, we may have the confirmation to the fact that Disney is intending to use Gunn’s script for the film. His brother Sean Gunn who has been heavily involved with the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, playing the Ravager Kraglin and doing the CGI mo-cap for Rocket, recently had an interview with Tulsa World where he more or less confirmed the fact that Disney is looking forward to making the movie that his brother wrote.
He said:
“I don’t really know yet what’s going on with Guardians 3. I know that Disney still wants to make the movie. I know that they have every intention of using the script that my brother wrote. Obviously, that was a very unfortunate situation for everybody, most of all him, but I am also somebody who had been preparing to spend half a year making that movie and now that’s up in the air.”
He addressed the situation that Disney is in, talking about them having a sort of difficult to find a perfect director for the final Guardians movie. He said:
“Obviously, I think it’s a tricky proposition for them to find another director to step in — and also the scheduling of a lot of other actors who are incredibly busy can’t be easy. But I know that they plan on making the movie. I had not been contacted at all for a while, but I was recently contacted by Marvel saying, ‘Yeah, we do plan to make this movie. We’re just not sure when yet.'”
He continued to talk about the most important matter for Disney, which is making a great movie and not disappoints the fans (which they have already) who have invested themselves in the franchise:
“Honestly, that’s really what I cared about more than anything with all of this. I don’t want the fans to be deprived of something that they really love and really want. I go, and I do these conventions and a really striking thing to me … is fans are basically split into two camps. There is one group that is super supportive of my brother and range from sad to angry about what happened. And then the other half are people who don’t know and don’t care. They just want to see the movie.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was supposed to come out on May 1, 2020, but since it has been delayed, we should not expect the movie to come out any time before 2021, or even 2022.
