James Gunn will direct Guardians of the Galaxy 3… | Little White Lies

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James Gunn will direct Guardians of the Galaxy 3 after all

15 Mar 2019

Words by Adam Woodward

A man in a suit smiling and holding a small black dog on his shoulders.
A man in a suit smiling and holding a small black dog on his shoulders.
Dis­ney con­firms rehir­ing fol­low­ing Gunn’s pub­lic dis­missal in July 2018.

This year marks a peri­od of tran­si­tion for Mar­vel. The recent suc­cess of Cap­tain Mar­vel appears to her­ald a new age of female-front­ed super­hero movies, while this summer’s Avengers: Endgame will (pre­sum­ably) see audi­ences bid adieu to some of the MCU’s most beloved char­ac­ters. In anoth­er respect, how­ev­er, the stu­dio is appar­ent­ly less will­ing to embrace change.

Accord­ing to a report from Dead­line, Gunn is set to rejoin the pro­duc­tion of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 fol­low­ing his very pub­lic dis­missal in July 2018 amid the furore sur­round­ing numer­ous decade-old (admit­ted­ly poor taste) jokes the direc­tor made on social media.

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Gunn apol­o­gised at the time, was imme­di­ate­ly backed up by mem­bers of his cast and crew, and now after months of spec­u­la­tion this com­pli­cat­ed and messy saga appears to be near­ing a con­clu­sion that will appease those Mar­vel fans who peti­tioned for his return.

It’s a some­what sur­pris­ing U‑turn from Dis­ney, espe­cial­ly giv­en the swift­ness of the deci­sion to relieve Gunn of direct­ing duties on the forth­com­ing third instal­ment of the MCU fran­chise. But it also makes sense – at least from a com­mer­cial point of view: the first two Guardians films made a truck­load of cash at the glob­al box office.

Gunn has already penned a script, and with Chris Pratt, Zoey Sal­dana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel and Bradley Coop­er all like­ly to be return­ing – along with new recruits Eliz­a­beth Debic­ki and Pom Kle­men­ti­eff – it seems a hap­py reunion awaits.

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