James Gunn will no longer be leading ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ after some controversial messages on social media surfaced…
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ will move forward without James Gunn writing and directing the film.
On Friday, Gunn was removed from the Marvel Studios project after some very controversial tweets surfaced from the director’s Twitter account from several years ago.
Gunn was called out by conservative news sites after he was highly critical of President Donald Trump as his messages were splashed across the internet while he raced to delete numerous messages from the past.
“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,” Walt Disney Company Chairman Alan Horn said in a statement Friday.
The offensive tweets were from around 2008 and 2009 and included several inappropriate tweets related to pedophilia, sexual assault as well as AIDS. After the messages surfaced, Gunn issued an apology for what he had said a decade ago.
“My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative,” his statement read. “I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t reflect the person I am today or have been for some time,” Gunn wrote.
“Regardless of how much time has passed, I understand and accept the business decisions taken today. Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies. Love to all.”
Gunn was in the midst of working through his script for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ that would likely begin filming next year with a 2020 release date from Marvel.
Now there’s no word if the movie will move forward with a new director or perhaps Marvel pushes back the project to further distance themselves from Gunn, who was the writer and director behind both ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movies.
