After director James Gunn’s high-profile firing from the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, actors and celebrities have taken to social media in his defence.
Disney announced Friday that Gunn would be removed from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after old tweets in which the director joked about topics like rape, paedophilia, 9/11 and the Holocaust surfaced.
Selma Blair tweeted in defence of the embattled director this weekend, urging Disney to rehire him and sharing a Change.com petition directed at Marvel.
Said the actress: “Because if people are punished despite changing, then what does that teach people about owning mistakes and evolving? This man is one of the good ones.”
By Sunday afternoon, 108,124 people had signed the petition.
Dave Bautista, who stars in the Guardians series as Drax, also took to Twitter in support of the director saying, “What happened here is so much bigger then G3, @JamesGunn, myself, @Disney, etc. This was a #cybernazi attack that succeeded. Unless we start to unite together against this crap, whether people are offended are not! ... it’s going to get much worse. And it can happen to anyone.”
“What will you do when the #cybernazis attack you?” he continued in another tweet. “Who will stand by you? Who will cowardly distance themselves from you? Who will punish you for horrible JOKES in the past instead of defending you for INSPIRING millions? MILLIONS!!! #Redemption #injustice”
The filmmaker’s brother Sean Gunn, a star of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, also tweeted in support of the director. In a 10-tweet thread, he said, “I hope it goes without saying that I love and support my brother James” and “Since devoting his entire life to the Guardians movies and MCU six years ago, I’ve seen him channel that voice into his work on those movies and seen him transform from the guy who made up things to shock people.”
