I know it may be hard to believe, but there’s something that Disney values more than their “family friendly image” and that thing is money. And they were set to lose hundreds of millions if they moved ahead with Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 without James Gunn. So after months of insisting that James Gunn would never be rehired for Guardians, Disney rehired James Gunn for Guardians.
Here’s a brief timeline of what happened with Gunn’s firing. Over a decade ago when he was working at Troma films, Gunn made a bunch of really edgy jokes about pedophilia and rape. Some of them were really funny, some of them didn’t really land. No one cared. Then Roseanne Barr got fired and a right-wing dipshit named Mike Cernovich dug up Gunn’s tweets because he was mad about Barr’s firing and also about his tiny penis and the fact that he talks like Barry Kripke from The Big Bang Theory. Disney almost immediately fired Gunn and publicly refused to back down despite the entire cast of Guardians of the Galaxy calling for him to be reinstated. Then they decided they liked money more than making the dumbest people on Twitter happy and reinstated him.
Deadline broke the story, and here’s the really interesting bit.
The decision to rehire Gunn –he was fired last July by Disney after alt-right journalists made public a fusillade of decade old social media missives that made light of pedophilia and rape — was one that was mulled and actually made months ago, following conversations with Disney studio leadership and the team at Marvel Studios. Why the change of heart? After the firing, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn met with Gunn on multiple occasions to discuss the situation. Persuaded by Gunn’s public apology and his handling of the situation after, Horn decided to reverse course and reinstate Gunn.
Guys, when you do something good you don’t have to keep it secret.
Gunn posted a message on Twitter after the news broke, his first tweet since he was fired last July.
A presidential candidate also weighed in Gunn’s rehiring.
Glad James Gunn is back.
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) March 15, 2019
I mean, not one you’ve heard of, but Andrew Yang is doing surprisingly well and has collected enough individual donations to take part in the first Democratic debate.
The bottom line here is that this is the first good thing Disney has done since they announced their merger with Fox. It even almost makes up for Captain Marvel being a two-hour commercial for the Air Force.