In July of last year, Disney fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn due to the resurfacing of some of his insensitive tweets. In March of this year, Gunn was rehired to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Today, the director broke his silence on everything that went down over those nine months in an interview with Deadline.
- Gunn shared his thoughts on Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn and the meeting in which he was rehired:
- “I really believe he is a good man and I think he hired me back because he thought that was the right thing to do. I’ve known him a little, going back to the Scooby-Doo movies. I’ve always liked and admired him. I was touched by his compassion.”
- Gunn also explained that he immediately felt a range of emotions upon hearing the news:
- “I got a little bit teary-eyed in his office. And then I had to go tell Kevin Feige I had just decided to do The Suicide Squad, so that made me very nervous.”
- The writer and director kept a very level head regarding his firing and placed all the blame on himself:
- “I don’t blame anyone. I feel and have felt bad for a while about some of the ways I spoke publicly; some of the jokes I made, some of the targets of my humor, just the unintentional consequences of not being more compassionate in what I’m putting out there. I know that people have been hurt by things that I’ve said, and that’s still my responsibility, that I wasn’t as compassionate as I should be in what I say. I feel bad for that and take full responsibility. Disney totally had the right to fire me. This wasn’t a free speech issue. I said something they didn’t like and they completely had the right to fire me. There was never any argument of that.”
- Gunn went on to explain some personal growth he experienced during the time he was fired from Disney, citing the response from Guardians actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan and Dave Bautista:
- “That amount of love that I felt from my friends, my family, and the people in the community was absolutely overwhelming. In order for me to have fully felt that love for the first time, the thing that needed to happen was the apparatus by which I was feeling falsely loved had to be completely taken away.”
- Now that he will be returning to helm Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Gunn explained that the character he is most excited to work with again is Rocket Raccoon:
- “I relate to Rocket and I feel compassion for Rocket, but I also feel like his story has not been completed. He has an arc that started in the first movie, continued into the second and goes through Infinity War and Endgame, and then I was set to really finish that arc in Guardians 3.”
- No release date has been announced yet for Gunn’ Guardians 3, but Walt Disney Studios’ recently announced film release schedule includes untitled Marvel films on May 1 and November 6, 2020 as well as several others moving forward.