In the wake of the Mike Cernovich-engineered firing of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, production has halted on the third film in the series. Preproduction crewmembers were let go and instructed to seek new work, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
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.
After Gunn was fired, Guardians stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and Dave Bautista all publicly requested that the director be reinstated. His years-old tweets—which were indefensible, joking about rape and pedophilia—had been promoted out of context by Cernovich, a PizzaGate conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that date rape is real and was clearly acting out of bad faith.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that Marvel and Disney are looking for a new director to helm the franchise, and suggest that Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi—who their sources say recently met with Marvel to discuss an unknown project—could be in the running.
