ORIGINAL SINNERS
ON FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2018, James Gunn’s world suddenly came crashing down. One day, he was riding high at Disney’s Marvel Studios with the meteorically successful Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. The next he was an instant pariah, fired as the writer-director of Guardians Vol. 3 . In a matter of hours he was on the outside. The bad guy. He must have felt like he’d been thrown into movie-making prison. “Yeah, absolutely,” Gunn confirms just over two years later. “For a couple of days I felt like my career was over. That I was gone .”
His mistake was having posted a series of offensive joke tweets between eight and 11 years earlier. These had been dug up and recirculated by alt-righters with an axe to grind over the outspoken filmmaker’s remarks about conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, not to mention his ongoing criticism of Donald Trump.
A swift, public apology — not Gunn’s first for his former self’s questionable sense of humour — didn’t help. Walt Disney Studios boss Alan Horn asked him to clear his desk. “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values,” stated Horn, “and we have severed our business relationship with him.”
Then, just three days later, the call came. A lifeline. From none other than Warner Bros., Disney’s biggest rival in the world of superheroic blockbusting, home to DC Films. They wondered if he’d like to come make a movie for them . A DC movie. Any DC movie. Gunn could have his pick of their entire catalogue — including Superman.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” he admits, “because there was still so much anger and pressure from the outside that it didn’t feel real. I felt like, ‘They’re they want me to direct a movie. They’re I can do whatever I want… But I don’t really believe
