Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 indefenitely delayed

Hollywood Reporter

The production of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is being put on hold for the time being as Marvel and Disney regroup on the project, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Sources say that crew members, at this stage a small group that was prepping for pre-production, are being dismissed and are free to look for new work.

The Marvel project was to have been directed by James Gunn and was to have begun principal photography in the winter, either in January or February. The project was crewing up and was to have gone into full pre-production mode in the fall.

But Gunn was let go as the director in July when old tweets were resurfaced, likely in response to his vocal political posts. And while some held out hope that the director would be given a reprieve by Disney, a mid-August meeting with Disney chairman Alan Horn closed the door on that.

One person characterized the production hold as temporary and more of a "regrouping" as Marvel and Disney look for a filmmaker to take on the third installment of a franchise that has grossed over $1.6 billion and made stars out of Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldana.

"The timeline has been pushed out," says a source. Disney never set a release date for Guardians 3.

Marvel and Disney are taking a measured approach in their search for a filmmaker (one source says that Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi recently had a meeting with Marvel but it is unclear what project was discussed) and with good reason.

The controversial firing has rankled the cast which in an open letter asked the studio to reinstate Gunn. Bautista, who plays the alien warrior Drax, has continued to show his disappointment on social media, and on Thursday he tagged Disney in a tweet featuring disturbing clips of Mike Cernovich, one of the conservative figures who led a campaign to get Gunn fired.

Disney had no comment.

Not surprised. Marvel fans and cast are practically in open revolt after Gunn got fired, and we have a particular hypocritical snowflake to thank for that.

Way to go, Disney. I hope your knee jerking was worth it.

Considering all the racism in Disney's past they shouldn't be throwing the proverbial stones. Also anyone that does anything to make that jackass happy is a moron.

But yes.............I was just reading about the delay to the movie.

Are you referring to Cernovich?

Yes

Yes

Didn't they kill all the cast in avengers anyway? Who is left?

@tenaka2: No, they all are alive. They will never die. If they die the comic of that dead person is over.

On the plus side, if Batista drops out they can just say Drax made himself invisible.

"The controversial firing has rankled the cast which in an open letter asked the studio to reinstate Gunn. Bautista, who plays the alien warrior Drax, has continued to show his disappointment on social media, and on Thursday he tagged Disney in a tweet featuring disturbing clips of Mike Cernovich, one of the conservative figures who led a campaign to get Gunn fired."

So, the point of that is...?

Does Mike Cernovich work at Disney? Is Disney in a position to fire Cernovich? Then...how are Cernovich's actions any of Disney's business?

Racism? This is about paedophilia and no one hopefully have to explain the difference and that for Disney the 2nd is a serious matter, and that the only option for Disney was to fire someone who openly hails Pedo´s as something good, no matter he later excuses it with "oh it was an immature joke"

But good for Disney, hopefully now they can recast it and remove Pratt and Batista and get someone better in those two roles.

This is what Disney get's for siding with an online right-wing bigoted troll. And, yes, they did choose his side.

Loyalty is a two-way street, it's not unconditional. By taking this zero-tolerance, knee-jerk, draconian stance, I hope Disney finds itself out of luck when calling on talented directors and actors to help make their product.

When his actions uncover "dirt" on an employee they become Disney's business. Cernovich's actions forced Disney to take action. You have to see that, yes?

Disney had a lot of options in how to respond: ignore it, support Gunn, call Cernovich on his own bullshit. But they failed to see the big picture and responded in the "safe" way.

Yes, Disney reacted in response to James Gunn's dirt.

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about the notion that James Gunn got fired because of James Gunn's tweets, not because Mike Cernovich had a beef with James Gunn.

If you want to talk about the message that it send by taking Mike Cernovich's side, then I hope you also consider the message that it would send by Disney basing their employment decisions on who digs up dirt on their employees.

Think about this for a minute. The notion here isn't that Disney just plain shouldn't have fired James Gunn, but that Disney shouldn't have fired James Gunn because it was Mike Cernovich who brought up James Gunn's dirt. That it would have been totally okay to fire him if anyone else had brought up James Gunn's dirt. But that since it was a total piece of s*** who dug up James Gunn's dirt, that they're supposed to keep him on the payroll anyway just to stick it to to that other asshole. You seriously don't see how that's unprofessional as hell? You seriously don't see how that could come back to bite Disney in the ass if they start publicly making it known that they base their employment decisions on that kind of stuff?

You seriously don't see why Disney doesn't want to give the appearance that they're letting their company policies be determined by political agendas of other parties? Right now, they can justify the firing on the basis of company policy. That goes out the window the second they make an exception to their company policy just to stick it to some jerk. Then they ARE letting outside parties have a say in who they employ.

Yeah, there are other options Disney could have taken. And if they hadn't acted so quickly, I'm sure they could have found a solution that let them save face while not just doing the opposite of what Mike Cernovich wanted them to do. But yeah...just plain doing the opposite of what Mike Cernovich wanted them to do because Mike Cernovich is a piece of shit is the OPPOSITE of "professional" and "fair", and Disney would have opened up a whole other can of worms by doing that. In the end, this still boils down to James Gunn's tweets. If he hadn't posted that stuff in the first place, he'd still have a job regardless of what Mike Cernovich wanted.

Disney of all institutions should know better than being too harsh on punishing someone for his past actions, more so if he was clearly joking.

I'm even surprised that the swj crew didn't jumped on a organized anti-Disney campaign calling them out for their past too. I would love Disney getting caught on a shitstorm. But I guess they have compromised a multi billion dollar franchise, so that is cool too.

As for Batista and rest of the crew, good on them for showing to have a backbone. And not shying for speaking their mind even risking losing money for it.

@MrGeezer: No, I don't think it matters who brought up the dirt, I don't think Disney should have fired him.

Rape survivor, someone who experienced child abuse...I'm sorry, but no matter how terrible an experience you went through in your life, you don't get to determine the livelihood and fate of complete strangers. That is way too much power to have. Companies need to start making a stand these days and determine their own course; some person, be it a victim or survivor with the best intentions or a misogynist-bigot with an agenda, should not be listened to.

From the point of view of business, it's called adhering to company's values. We can judge it as much as we like when it comes to a release of a movie we were waiting for, but that's what we all want done at the workplace. If they declare a position, they have to stick to it. Yes, these values change over time and they were not so concerned with these issues before, but maybe it's better to high-five them for trying to rebuild a consistent company culture.

And I'm talking the hypocrisy of the Disney corporation wanting to go back in time and demonize individuals when as they say in the law.......their hands aren't clean. And no.......it's about jokes in poor taste. Duh........

Good for the cast to stick to their guns (no pun intended). A company as big and powerful as Disney can easily become too arrogant.

They made it their business when they decided to react to his obvious attempts at trolling.

Mike Cernovich didn't determine squat. Again, James Gunn set himself up when he made the tweets. And it was Disney, not Cernovich, who "determined Gunn's livelihood" when they fired him. Disney did "determine their own course" when they fired one of their employees for improper conduct that their employee did.

Do you know what the OPPOSITE of "determining their own course" would be? Treating their employee's improper conduct differently than they would otherwise just because the person who tipped them off to that conduct happens to be an asshole.

You're free to disagree that the tweets were bad enough to warrant firing him, but make no mistake James Gunn did this to himself with his idiotic behavior. It was stupid as hell for him to be using his Twitter account as a dumping ground for random jokes in the first place, it was stupid as hell for him to put those kind of jokes on his Twitter account, it was stupid as hell of him not to delete all of that stuff YEARS AGO when he stopped making those comments. And back then he wasn't some stupid kid, he was a grown-ass middle aged man who damn well should have known better. Quit treating him like some victim here. I know that people these days don't like the idea that they're accountable for the s*** that they put online, but this is James Gunn's fault for putting that kind of crap out there in the first place.

@MrGeezer: Eh I think Disney reacted too soon to a troll attempt and wanted to not have any backlash. Unfortunately they've now painted themselves into a corner. They have the backlash they didn't want which I think is larger than the pitchforks against Gunn and they can't change course. Hence the delay. Was stupid all around. They should have trotted him out to apologize for his stupid behavior in the past and moved on.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet at this point Disney's move has cost them more money than they would had they kept Gunn employed.

I'm wondering what his severance pay was (if applicable).

I also imagine during negotiations directors can now ask for more money, seeing as how working with Disney is "risky" if you have at any point in time [like most adults] indulged in some dark humor.

I'm honestly considering not seeing any new Marvel movie at this point. And I'm really surprised that the cast hasn't completely revolted and quit the movie yet, considering how vocal they were when it happened.

You bought that?

Them reacting too soon and miscalculating the public's response is actually quite likely, but that's a very different thing than the argument that they should have kept him employed just to piss off Mike Cernovich.

Disney doesn't give a s*** about Mike Cernovich, they give a s*** about their money.

No way. It's not as if James Gunn's career got screwed by him working at Disney, he's in a far better position than he was before due to his work at Disney. If you want the money and exposure that come from working on one of these high-profile Disney movies, then keeping a clean public image is a small price to pay. Of course anyone's free to turn down a Disney role if they want to, but think about how a lot of these Marvel movies are directed by low-profile directors without a lot of established work. The job IS a major step up, and if anyone decides that taking the best job of their career is "too risky" then there will be plenty of other up-and-coming directors ready to fill the spot.

EDIT: Not to mention that demanding extra pay for the risk of them finding some dirt on the applicant is basically an admission that the applicant has some s*** out there that they don't want Disney to see. That's not a very smart move for someone who doesn't even have the job yet. Best case scenario: Disney does a more thorough background check and finds whatever dirt the applicant was trying to hide. More likely scenario: Disney doesn't even think it's worth wasting time on a background check, and instead they just simply turn down the applicant on the spot.

You don't seem to be familiar with the Infinity Gauntlet story. You should read it some time.

You, do know that Disney is for kids right? they build their business on being for kids. So hopefully no one has to explain to you why they could not just look past the tweets, if it had been anything else Gunn would have been fine, but considering what it was. Gunn left Disney with one option.

Also, Disney is not being hypocrites, Racism is bad but it´s not nearly as bad or controversial as Paedophilia.

This will encourage whoever digged up his past tweets to dig up more famous people past. Its going to be one hell of a hellstorm.

Makes sense to me. The first was dope, the second blew. The problem is that they are using GotG team members that are not really "super heroes". The COOL GotG characters are the ones from the 90's version of the comic book. WAY doper than the characters they use in the MCU. Not a single one of them had "powers" in the MCU version. People don't really want to see a Drax or Gamora cause those characters are BEYOND boring

@darknorse77: yeah, and that insect lady. She should be a real insect.

They can do that if they want, but it STILL comes down to people having dumb-ass stuff on their accounts when they ought to know better.

Look, if this was a Hulk Hogan type situation in which someone is being spied upon or the "dirt" is obtained illegally or unethically, then I'd have more sympathy. But remember that in James Gunn's situation, the stuff was just sitting there on his public twitter account. Honestly, if people don't learn to stop leaving damaging s*** on their public social media accounts then it's really their fault if someone digs up that dirt and exposes it.

Seriously, this is just the reality of the world that we live in and it's way past time for people to have started accepting it. It's not a good idea to be posting offensive or inflammatory stuff online in the first place, but IF you're going to do it then don't put that $*** on your personal Facebook or Twitter account. Go to some online forum where you can post anonymously as someone with a fake user name, and then don't provide any information that would tip people off to who you actually are. Keep your public social media accounts clean, don't post every dumb-ass thing that pops into your head. Don't show off your personal s*** to the rest of the world by getting into social media beefs with people who you should be working those issues out in private. And don't freaking use your Twitter or Facebook account as a dumping ground for your random thoughts and offensive jokes. People should be using those kinds of social media accounts the same way that a company handles their public image. Think before you post something, and if it makes you look bad then don't freaking post it.

I'm sorry, but this is just a new essential life skill. And some people just plain aren't going to learn to adapt, and they will crash and burn. But just because the internet now means that you CAN show the whole world your personal life doesn't mean that you should. Everyone has some kind of dirt, but it falls on individual responsibility to keep private dirt private and not show it off to the rest of the world by dumping it on their social media accounts. Some people are just plain never going to learn this, and I'm sorry but they're setting themselves up for a fall.

In that case. Why did Disney hire James Gunn in the first place?

@horgen: Value-based corporate culture became a widespread theory not too long ago and some businesses are slower to adapt to this change. They were looking for a skilled professional to fulfill project goals, he is a skilled professional, but his behaviour contradicts the present day Disney view of who they are as a team. Basically, it's like keeping a very smart accountant who's a toxic person: you can focus on productivity or you can also estimate the negative impact of personal views on overall morale of the employees. Disney is a business functioning in highly competitive industry, they must take their brand image into account to attract and retain talents. A lot of great actors could drop their offer if they do not want to be associated with a brand with, let's say, questionable reputation. Can they go too far in that? Well, there's a possibility, but the market will influence that anyway, if they see a huge drop in revenue due to this or similar decisions, they'll have to adjust.

Get back to me when you know the history of Disney. Right now you're spewing errors.

Also I don't see a big public reaction to the tweets.

Just out of curiosity, which current Disney employees are you talking about, and what did they do?

I'm talking about the corporation itself. But if you want to know a story that should be told check into the way they treat their employees. Wages have decreased and many are not able to afford necessities. Many were even homeless at certain points. I think that should get more press than old tweets by Gunn.

Anyway in general I'm talking about the entire history of the company since this was a reaction to an event that happened in history. In fact some of their animated fields have racism tropes and I'm not talking about back in the early days but in modern history. Hence why I said the legal term clean hands in one of my posts.

Okay, if the historical events that you're talking about weren't done by anyone who still works at Disney, then how is this hypocrisy? How is it hypocritical for current Disney executives to fire a current Disney employee for moral reasons, just because some former Disney executive who is dead and no longer works at the company did some bad stuff a long time ago?

To repeat, James Gunn got fired for tweets that James Gunn actually made. The people at Disney who fired James Gunn DIDN'T do the "historical" stuff that you're referring to. So how are the two situations comparable, and how is it hypocritical for current Disney executives to fire current Disney employees who actually did the stuff that they're getting fired for?

As far as Disney's wages, that sucks. Is Disney violating wage laws? If so, then they ought to be held accountable. Otherwise, lots of companies only pay some of their employees minimum wage.

People need to stop bringing up Disney’s history at if it’s relevent

Like the people back then are all dead

Anyway delay was inevitable

Not like it matters

Disney has tons of capeshit to stuff down our throats

If their is not relevant then neither is Gunn's.........

lol right?

"People's history matters!"
"What about yours!"
"Well, there's always exceptions..."

None of the people are alive

Let’s not pretend that these things are equivalent matters

I am pro Gunn btw

Is this a pun? (no pun intended)

Can't believe I agree with you for the first time.

It's about jokes in poor taste. You guys and your hyperbole.