James Gunn breaks his silence on his Disney firing and rehiring
By Ariba Bhuvad
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has had quite the year. First, Disney fired him after a number of offensive, decade-old tweets came to light. In the interim, Warner Bros. hired him to work on Suicide Squad 2, and then Disney rehired him to discuss Guardians 3. To say it’s been a whirlwind is putting it lightly, but it all came together in the end.
In an interview with Deadline, Gunn opens up about the day after he was canned. “I’m going to say it was the most intense of my entire life,” he said.
But he wasn’t bitter. His tweets, while made years ago during a time when he wasn’t thinking nearly as hard about serious issues, were deeply tasteless, and treated topics like rape and pedophilia far too lightly. “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,” he said. “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.”
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In the days since, things really changed for Gunn. He had the full support of many of his colleagues, including the Guardians cast members. Gunn recalls being called in by Alan Horn, Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, and having the conversation that once again would bring him back into the Disney family:
"I was about to sit down and talk about The Suicide Squad with DC and I was excited about that. Alan asked me to come talk to him. 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 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."
So, was James Gunn angered and frustrated over Disney’s decision? In short. He compared it to his amicable divorce:
"I wanted to feel that way about Disney. I didn’t want to look back and feel bitter, upset or angry. Of course all sorts of emotions are attached to it. But I just wanted to be comfortable saying goodbye and splitting up, and that’s where my head was at, even in the very early meeting we had, a week or two weeks after it all happened."
Of course, being fired from Disney initially meant that he would no longer get to work on Guardians, a series into which he’d poured a ton of time and effort. Gunn reflected on what being brought back for the third installment means for him, and how losing one Guardians character, in particular, hit him hard:
"When you asked me what was saddest for me when I thought it was gone—and anybody at Marvel can tell you—it’s this very strange and attached relationship to Rocket. Rocket is me, he really is, even if that sounds narcissistic. […] I relate to Rocket and I feel compassion for Rocket, but I also feel like his story has not been completed. […] That was a big loss to me—not being able to finish that story—though I was comforted by the fact that they were still planning to use my script."
Well, it appears all this is now in James Gunn’s past, and now he has not one but two superhero movies to look forward to directing.
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