James Gunn Breaks Silence On High-Profile Disney Firing
                     ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Director Ja
mes Gunn Breaks Silence On High-Pro
file 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.
Contact Us
Website: https://www.jamesgunn.com/
Address: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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 ‘The Suicide Squad’ Release Dates Won’t Be Delayed