Los Angeles:
_Guardians of the Galaxy_ star
Zoe Saldana and actor
Selma Blair have come forward in support of
James Gunn , who was
fired from the Marvel threequel after a series of his old offensive tweets resurfaced on social media. [caption id=“attachment_4799421” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Zoe Saldana (left) and Salma Blar (right). Facebook/@ZoeSaldana, @SelmaBlair[/caption] Saldana, who plays Gamora in the MCU, took to Twitter and without mentioning Gunn simply stated that loves “ALL members of GOTG family”.
It’s been a challenging weekend I’m not gonna lie. I’m pausing myself to take everything in before I speak out of term. I just want everyone to know I love ALL members of my GOTG family. Always will.
— Zoe Saldana (@zoesaldana) July 22, 2018
Blair, who is friend of the sacked filmmaker, shared the link to the online petition asking Walt Disney Co to rehire him.
Star Lord/Peter Quill actor Chris Pratt , who evaded questions related to Gunn during a Q&A session round for _The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part_ at San Diego Comic-Con initially, shared a cryptic message on Twitter with a Bible verse, the prayer hands and heart emojis.
“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters. Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
— Chris Pratt (@prattprattpratt) July 22, 2018
JAMES 1:19
🙏♥️
Gunn’s brother, Sean, who stars as Kraglin in the Guardians franchise, came to his defense, urging fans to still “appreciate” the films despite his director brother formerly being “kind of a jacka**”.
Gunn further tweeted:
Dave Bautista, who was the first one from the Guardians team to come to the director’s defence, claimed the unearthing of Gunn’s old tweets was a “cyber attack”.
In the old tweets, screenshots of which are available online, the 51-year-old director cracked crude jokes dealing with pedophilia and rape. The screenshots of Gunn’s tweets, which ranged from 2009 through 2012, were shared by a conservative website The Daily Caller. After being fired, the filmmaker also issued a statement where he “regretted” the tweets and stressed that “they don’t reflect the person I am today”. Gunn was in the middle of writing the script for the third film, which was scheduled to begin shooting in Atlanta in the fall for a 2020 release date. The petition, titled 'RE-HIRE JAMES GUNN' on website change.org was started by a Chandler Edwards, has gained over 140,000 signatures in Gunn’s support.