‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Director James Gunn Breaks Silence On High-

Profile Disney Firing, & What He Learned From The Career Crisis That

Followed — Deadline Disruptors

Though he would finish that script, the corporation pulled the plug after being presented with a volley of joke tweets Gunn wrote that made light of pedophilia and rape. The tweets were vile, and the optics terrible. It didn’t matter that they were tweeted a decade ago. That he’d previously apologized. Or, that he was the target of a takedown campaign by alt-right journalists after his anti-Trump missives. Disney was prompted to act — it had just banished Roseanne Barr from the hottest show on TV that bore her name because of offensive tweets — and Gunn’s career was endangered.

In a move last March that seemed just as shocking, the studio changed course and reinstated him. Having previously written and directed two hit Marvel films that globally grossed over $1.6 billion, he will now helm Guardians 3 after he finishes The Suicide Squad.

The formerly outspoken filmmaker helped his cause somewhat by not blaming anyone but himself. Now, for the first time, Gunn breaks his silence on the lessons he learned.

How did you feel when Disney’s Alan Horn invited you back for Guardians of the Galaxy 3?

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’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. You hear in Hollywood that everybody’s cutthroat. That’s true of a section of this industry, but there’s also a lot of really good people. I’m always attracted to finding that goodness in places we don’t expect, often in the characters in my movies. 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.

Yes. I was writing Suicide Squad and thought of Guardians 3 as being long gone. I guess it was a possibility for a while, but the initial conversations with Alan weren’t, “Let’s figure out if I should come back.” It was, “Let’s talk about this.” It was like the break-up of my marriage. I got divorced, and then had those conversations with my ex-wife: “Let’s get along as well as we possibly can and be kind to each other because we’re both a large part of each other’s lives.”

But I would hate to look back on the six years that my wife and I were together and think, Oh, what a waste of time. Instead, I think it was a time when I really grew a lot and we were really good to each other. There were some problems, and we just weren’t supposed to be married, but it was well worth living that six years with my ex.

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.

For a filmmaker with a reputation for being outspoken on social media, your public response to the firing was muted. You didn’t blame anyone but yourself, which clearly factored into Horn’s decision to reinstate you. What was going through your head at that time?

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.

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Website: https://www.jamesgunn.com/

Address: St. Louis, Missouri, USA

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