Disney has removed James Gunn as the director of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy franchise after a series of problematic social media arguments touching on subjects like pedophilia and rape were unearthed, Deadline reports.
"The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him," said Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn in a statement, per the Hollywood Reporter.
Gunn issued an official statement after being fired by Disney, per Deadline. The response reads as follows:
The tweets were unearthed by Jack Posobiec, an outspoken conservative and supporter of Donald Trump. The tweets were discovered and found just two days after Gunn became involved in a Twitter argument between Mark Duplass and The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro. According to IndieWire, Duplass tweeted on July 18 that his “fellow liberals” ought to follow Shapiro in an attempt to “cross the aisle.” He was immediately criticized for the suggestion, with many pointing to racist positions held by Shapiro, including a Tweet that blamed Trayvon Martin for getting shot, as a reason why he should not be tolerated.
Gunn, an outspoken critic of Trump, defended Duplass, saying he disagreed with his fellow director but that the outrage was being directed at the wrong side. “Maybe you disagree with Mark Duplass,” Gunn wrote. “But that doesn’t make Duplass’ point-of-view evil. There are a lot of traitors & racists in the country today. Perhaps save the outrage for them.”
“Mark Duplass tweeting how you should follow an asshole because he thinks it’s the kind thing to do simply can’t be the bar for moral outrage,” he added.
Duplass eventually issued an apology for his tweet, adding that he in “no way endorse[s] hatred, racism, homophobia, xenophobia or any such form of intolerance.”
The next day, conservative personalities and Trump supporters Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich published a series of screenshots of now-deleted tweets containing a slew of homophobic, transphobic, rape- and pedophilia-related jokes published on Gunn's Twitter account several years ago.
At the time, Gunn admitted he did write those tweets and he apologized. "Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor.” He added that he is “very, very different” than he was back then. He also canceled an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con with Yahoo Entertainment.
Gunn has directed both previous Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and had been working on writing the script for the third movie. The first movie made $773 million worldwide while the second made $863 million, and their success has been attributed to Gunn's "off-kilter filmmaking sensibilities that owed more to indie genre movies than slicker cookie cutter studio fare,” as The Hollywood Reporter notes.