Mandatory Credit: Photo by Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock (9126774fb) James Gunn World Premiere of "Thor: Ragnarok", Los Angeles, USA - 10 Oct 2017
It looks like Dave Bautista’s wish is finally going to come true. James Gunn is returning to direct the sequel to Guardian of the galaxy. As you may recall, he was fired in July 2017 due to a series of tweets that was found on his feed by Mike Cernovich. Disney publicly declared that the director would no longer be associated with the studio and would not be back to direct the third installment of The Guardians of the galaxy.
Chairman of Walt Disney studios Alan Horn issued a statement , he said that “the offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James Gunn’s Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values. Instinctively, Actors voiced out their opinions and showed support towards James Gunn by writing letters and signing petitions to bring Gunn back.
Their defense mostly was that the tweets were old, and they shouldn’t be a reflection of his current beliefs and values. Dave Baustista especially wasn’t particular excited about the decision going as far threatening to leave film if the studio fails to re-hire him. In recent developments, Disney’s chairman has reportedly met with Gunn and Marvel Studios co-president Kevin Feige to talk about possibly coming back in August, but nothing came of the meeting at the time.
Since then, Gunn has agreed to direct the second installment of suicide squad for Warner Bros. Production of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is in development, but was pushed back from its original 2020 release date. There is still no official release date for the film.