A little over a week ago, we were on the verge of SDCC, with James Gunn set to pop into the Sony Hall H presentation with a mysterious announcement of a new film. No one knew what it was…an adaptation of Berserk? Bloodborne? My favorite theory, that it was an adaptation of Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s Nameless?*

We never found out what that announcement was going to be, as James Gunn was instead fired by Disney from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise thanks to some highly offensive tweets of his resurfacing.

After that, we’ve seen share of debate in the court of public opinion about Gunn’s past behavior vs present actions and whether Disney was right to fire him, or if they should have ever hired him in the first place. Many other celebrities and public figures have also weighed in, some enlightening, some not…but the lingering question remained, how would the cast react to this decision.

Today, they released a statement:

 

I wouldn’t exactly call it the most forceful piece, there’s surely much that has to be weighed out with this kind of thing, but that they organized at all is telling in of itself. According to Variety’s sources, there’s a sense that Gunn may actually be reinstated to the third installment, which begins production at the beginning of next year and Disney has yet to announce a replacement.

Disney chairman, Bob Iger is currently on vacation and any decision on the future of the franchise will be on hold until he returns. But if Gunn isn’t reinstated, would the cast actually walk? One has to imagine the contracts involved in something as massive as the Marvel machine have to be pretty air-tight and expensive to get out of. Quite a story that continues to develop.

* All signs point to it not being Nameless, by the way.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Here’s the best article I’ve read about this, by film journalist Mark Harris:

    ww.vulture.com/2018/07/james-gunn-is-not-roseanne-and-disney-should-know-it.html

    Key line:

    “Disney has always fluffed its feathers about how, because of its worldwide brand, anyone associated with its name must be above reproach, but in the wake of its merger with 21st Century Fox, it’s going to be responsible for more of what we watch than any other company in America. How the company decides what to punish and what to defend is a question its employees and its customers have a right to ask, and the answer had better be something other than ‘We’ll do it quickly and in a state of panic.'”

  2. “But if Gunn isn’t reinstated, would the cast actually walk? One has to imagine the contracts involved in something as massive as the Marvel machine have to be pretty air-tight and expensive to get out of.”

    Shailene Woodley refused to appear in the last Divergent movie after the studio (Lionsgate) decided it would be a made-for-TV movie. As she said in an interview: “I signed up to make movies, not TV shows.”

    She apparently got away with it, because there has been no last Divergent movie. The series ended without an ending.

  3. So far from the cast threatening to walk, I think Disney would be prepared to sack them all sooner than be dictated to in that way.

  4. I think the cast are handling this the right way, they are too professional to make threats about walking out, and you also don’t want Disney to re-hire Gunn based on threats, that would just make for a bad work environment.
    A show of support is the best hope of having him back.

  5. No matter how this turns out, you can count on fans to support Disney and trash the actors. Fans ALWAYS take the side of corporations.

    After all, it’s corporations that keep their beloved popcorn entertainment chugging along on the assembly lines. It’s the artsy-fartsy “talent” (directors, actors, writers) who muck things up by wanting to do things their own way, instead of following orders like good soldiers.

  6. After thinking a bit on this, and actually looking at some of these tweets directly, and of course watching iDubbbzTV’s video on it, I think I’ve come to a conclusion.

    First of all, James Gunn isn’t a pedophile. I think it’s pretty obvious that everything he said was just part of a twitter shitposting war with his friends. Look at a twitter account like @degg and you’ll get it. Half the stuff he said was retweets from other dudes, and for-god’s-sake-people-this-is-just-a-bunch-of-buddies-fucking-with-each-other-and-none-of-it-is-literal-in-any-sense.

    The only weird thing about it is that he was acting like a teenager in his 40s, but since he didn’t have a big mainstream hollywood gig back then, who was he trying to impress?

    Now, with that out of the way, should he have been fired for it? Sure, it’s probably not the best publicity for Disney, but I think the problem is more the panicky ultra-sensitive couple of years we’re living in the situation itself. If this had happened a few years ago, it wouldn’t have been this big of a deal, and I have a sneaking suspicion that in another handful of years it wouldn’t have been a big deal either.

    Gunn was only fired to appease the media, and I doubt he’ll be gone for more than a year or two. We might just get GOTG V3 a bit later than 2020.

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