This came out of nowhere - but James Gunn was just fired by Disney!
Last year, after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, James Gunn seemed to own the world. Following a second successful MCU flick, the director was announced to outline the future cosmic adventures set in the shared universe.
In other words, Kevin Feige and the other bosses had absolute trust in the director. So when it came to bring the Guardians together with the Avengers during the Infinity War, James Gunn was called to help.
Just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the director has already presented a first draft of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, movie supposed to shoot sometime next year.
But today the bomb was dropped! Following the unearthing of some old Tweets, the director has been laid off!
"The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James' Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values, and we have severed our business relationship with him." This was the statement made by Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn, via THR.
The tweets date back to 2008 and 2009, so they are indeed very old. They were dug up by conservative website The Daily Caller, following James Gunn's recent Twitter activity. After the Daily Caller found these tweets, they repeatedly asked the fans to confront the director at the SDCC.
James Gunn was supposed to make a surprise appearence at Sony's panel. But Sony pulled him at the very last moment.
Before the statement released by Walt Disney Studios, Gunn said that everybody knows how his sense of humour developed over the years. In this way, if previously (2008-2009) he made jokes about rape and paedophilia, he doesn't nowadays.
You can check out the thread in here.
1. Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I've developed as a person, so has my work and my humor.
"” James Gunn (@JamesGunn) July 20, 2018
@WaltDisneyCo @Disney @DisneyStudios this is who you have working for your "family company?" pic.twitter.com/XhI2iTqmVI
"” Westshore (@Tampa_33611) July 20, 2018