Months after Disney and Marvel Studios made the decision to fire James Gunn from his position as the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, Disney CEO Bob Iger has finally broken his silence regarding the situation.
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In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Iger revealed that he wasn’t part of making the decision, but he supported it when it was brought to him. This answer came after he was asked about his role in the firing of Gunn from Marvel as well as Roseanne Barr from her show on ABC. While the two scenarios were very different, both revolved around offensive tweets.
“I would say there is a blend of my helping to make the decision to my supporting the decisions that have been made,” Iger told THR. “Roseanne was completely unanimous. We discussed how it would be communicated and when because there were a number of entities that had to be properly filled in, but the decision was completely unanimous. The James Gunn decision was brought to me as a unanimous decision of a variety of executives at the studio, and I supported it.”
As the interviewer notes, Disney has received plenty of backlash for the removal of Gunn, considering the fact that the tweets he was being fired for were posted nearly a decade ago. However, even in the face of the backlash, Iger says that he completely stands by the call.
“I haven’t second-guessed their decision,” he said.
Disney’s Alan Horn was the executive that was at the forefront of Gunn’s firing, as Iger was on vacation at the time of the incident. Judging by the way he talked about it here, it sounds as though Iger was informed of the plan to fire the director, and he gave the rest of the team the go-ahead.
As of now, Disney and Marvel still have yet to find a replacement for Gunn as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which was originally slated to arrive in 2020.
