Marvel directors back James Gunn's reinstatement on 'Guardians of the Galaxy 3'

Disney deciding out of the blue to reinstate James Gunn as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was pretty unexpected.

The studio seemed pretty steadfast on sticking to its decision when it announced that unearthed tweets he sent a decade ago were ‘indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values’.

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But now he’s back on board, his fellow Marvel directors are right behind the decision, tweeting their full support for the helmsman.

Peyton Reed, who made both Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, said:

Scott Derrickson, who was behind the camera on Doctor Strange, added:

Meanwhile, Taika Waititi, the director of Thor: Ragnarok joked:

Gunn had not appeared on Twitter since last July, before posting that he was ‘tremendously grateful’ to Disney for its change of heart on Friday.

Gunn was fired last year from his planned third movie in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, just weeks before it was meant to commence production.

Bad taste tweets joking about rape and paedophilia that Gunn had posted between 2009 and 2012 were unearthed and re-published by a right wing activist online.

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Disney fired Gunn soon after, but Deadline reports that since then, Disney president Alan Horn has met with the director on a number of occasions, and was impressed by the way he’d handled the situation.

150,000 people signed a petition last year to get Gunn back on board the movie, while stars Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker, Pom Klementieff and Bradley Cooper published an open letter asking Disney to reconsider.

Gunn had since signed up to direct the Suicide Squad sequel, though it’s not yet known how that will move forward.