James Gunn and Disney have gone their separate ways.
That’s the headline that almost sent the Internet into a collective tailspin this past weekend, when it was announced that Gunn would no longer direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for Marvel Studios.
The fallout has been fast and furious (no surprise there), with many of the filmmaker’s frequent collaborators – namely Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldana – leaping to his defense, and calling on Disney to reassess their decision. In case you missed it, the Mouse House severed ties with James Gunn after a series of admittedly contentious Tweets resurfaced from 10 years ago – Tweets containing crude rape jokes and other insensitive material.
To his credit, Gunn has since apologized for the content, and stressed that the decade-old material doesn’t reflect the person he is today. Whether that makes much of a difference remains to be seen, but over on Change.org (h/t EW), a petition has been launched in an attempt to have James Gunn reinstated as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director, and it’s well on its way to 200,000 signatures.
A user by the name of Chandler Edwards started the online petition on Friday, and it’s currently simmering around 171,500 signatures. That figure continues to climb by the minute, so it’ll be interesting to see whether Disney takes heed of this vocal support group – even if Edwards himself refuses to hold his breath.
I’m smart enough to know this most likely won’t change anything but hopefully, this could get Disney to realize the mistake they made and not do it again in the future. If Marvel would come to their senses and re-hire Gunn that would be great. But if all we can do is have proof, by your signatures, that Disney made a mistake, I would still count that as a win.
As things stand, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is scheduled to hit theaters in May of 2020 – just don’t be surprised if and when Marvel decides to pull the cosmic threequel until further notice.