Ousted filmmaker James Gunn has found himself smack bang in the middle of a media maelstrom over the past 72 hours.
To recap: on Friday, Disney shocked the industry with the swift termination of Gunn’s contract, leaving Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 without a director and Marvel’s cosmic universe in need of a new shepherd. The reason behind said dismissal can be traced back to a series of distasteful and indeed disturbing tweets from a decade ago – tweets that James Gunn has since apologized for.
Which brings us to Thanos creator Jim Starlin, who is now the latest figure to publically defend Gunn. So far, the list includes Guardians of the Galaxy cast members like Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista and Karen Gillan, all the way to former Hellboy actress and #MeToo advocate, Selma Blair.
And at least in the eyes of Starlin, Disney made “one hell of a bad call” when it severed ties with James Gunn:
After giving it a couple days to think over this James Gunn/Disney controversy, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Mouse got played. Yes, Gunn’s decade-old tweets were distasteful and stupid, but clearly meant to be foolishly provocative rather than taken as advocacy. The whole uproar over them was plainly ginned up by two Breitbart hatchet men, John Nolte and Mike Cernovich, in response to Rosanne Barr’s firing for her repeated hate-filled and racist tweets. I have to agree with Dave Bautista on this one. Disney accepted a ridiculous apple and oranges argument and made one hell of a bad call.
And so, the backlash to the backlash continues. Over on Change.org, for instance, a petition calling on Disney to reinstate James Gunn as director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has now surpassed 200,000 signatures, and that number only continues to climb by the hour.
The Mouse House is yet to comment on this petition and, frankly, is unlikely to do so. But as its creator points out, the overriding goal here is to make Disney stand up and “realize the mistake they made.”