Guardians of the Galaxy fans haven’t given up on trying to get writer/director James Gunn rehired in order to finish out his trilogy. Now, in addition to petitions and other support, they’re looking to take out a billboard as well.
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A group calling itself “Guardians Family” has set up a GoFundMe account to raise $2000 so that they can take out a billboard (or more than one) to encourage Disney to rehire Gunn. They plan for these billboards to be placed outside Disney’s theme parks in Florida and California near the holidays to “maximize exposure”. As of this writing, they have raised $1395 of their goal.
Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after years-old tweets surfaced that featured coarse humor, including jokes about rape, pedophilia, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Made years before Guardians of the Galaxy, most of the tweets had already been discussed when Marvel hired Gunn. He had previously apologized for the comments and acknowledged that they were in poor taste.
Those jokes, and some previously unexplored, were used against Gunn as part of a campaign to get him fired after he ran afoul of right-wing activists on Twitter led by one of the primary “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists. Gunn reiterated his position that the jokes were inappropriate and apologized again, but said that they represented immature attempts at being “edgy” and were not representative of the person he is now.
The next day, Disney fired Gunn, saying that “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.” The movie, which was expected to being production soon, has been put on an indefinite hold while the studio assesses what to do next.
This billboard campaign joins a fan petition that recently crossed the 400,000 signature mark on Change.org. While the organizer of that campaign, Chandler Edwards, acknowledges that the petition likely won’t change anything, the billboard campaign appears to truly seek to make some change. Right now, the future of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is in question as some fans would rather see no movie than a movie without Gunn, though Disney is said to be using Gunn’s completed script for the film.
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