In July 2018, James Gunn was on his way to San Diego Comic-Con when Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige called him to say he was being fired by Disney's Alan Horn. That came after a series of offensive jokes - "The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped and it’s like 'whew this feels great, not being raped!'" - from the mid-2000s were publicised by those who disagreed with the filmmaker's politics.
In a new profile on The Hollywood Reporter, Chris Pratt recalls his blunt reaction to the news.
"'Don't do it,'" he remembers telling Marvel Studios executive Louis D'Esposito. "Jesus f***ing Christ, don’t do it." When Feige called to say they intended to still use Gunn's script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the actor wasn't happy.
"I was like, 'Oh, so we can use the script written by James Gunn, but we just can’t have him direct?' The script is so good that you’re going to be like, 'Yeah, we had to get rid of him because we couldn’t associate with that man. But we will make his script.'"
For what it's worth, Feige confirms that they never considered other directors for the gig. "We didn’t even put a preliminary list together just because we couldn’t do it," he recalls. "We couldn’t stomach it."
For Gunn, the whole thing left him reeling.
"My feet weren’t on the ground at that point. It really made me go, 'What matters to me? Adulation and money? Is that really what I care about?'" As for what led to his re-hiring, Gunn adds: "It’s a hundred percent because Alan Horn felt sick. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do."
The trade reached out to Horn and while he wouldn't comment on the Tweets or Gunn's being reinstated as the movie's director, he does say, "Everything he did subsequently was first class. He was such a gentleman about it in the ensuing months that we just brought him back. It felt like the right thing to do. I hold him in absolute high regard."
During the period he was no longer working for Marvel Studios, Gunn was tapped to helm The Suicide Squad, a move that would ultimately lead to him being appointed DC Studios' co-CEO. After the upcoming threequel, the filmmaker will be done with the MCU for the foreseeable future.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 arrives in theaters on May 5.