During Comic-Con, provocateurs unearthed James Gunn’s offensive tweets from nearly a decade ago, which ended up costing the director his shot at completing the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel. However, there may still be a chance for Gunn to rejoin Marvel Studios and continue working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol, 3 in some capacity.
Deadline is reporting that back channel talks are taking place between Marvel Studios and Disney to potentially rehire Gunn. The report notes that this is “a long shot” after Disney executives ultimately made the call to fire Gunn. However, it appears that Marvel is more interested in getting Gunn back into the fold than in looking for another director to take over the franchise.
Disney have reportedly shown little interest in resigning Gunn in the wake of the controversy. However, rival studios including Warner Bros. are said to be very eager to approach Gunn with projects once his exit from Marvel/Disney is fully executed. Essentially, this means that Gunn’s career will only suffer a minor hiccup from his current situation. And if other studios aren’t afraid of any blowback from hiring Gunn, it does bring up an important question: why should Disney let one of their primary filmmakers slip away to their rivals?
The entire Guardians of the Galaxy cast has already released a joint statement in favor of Gunn’s reinstatement, while Dave Bautista went even further by threatening to leave the sequel if Gunn’s script wasn’t used. It’s unclear whether Marvel or Disney will use that script regardless of the outcome from their latest discussions on the subject. But a decision about whether to go forward with Gunn or another should be made soon if the sequel is to remain on target for a 2020 release.
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