James Gunn, director of Disney’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” appeared to support attacks on conservative actress Gina Carano after she was fired by Disney late last night following things that she wrote on social media.
“The post that generated the most controversy was a screenshot of another person’s post that she then posted onto her own Instagram account,” The Daily Wire reported. “The post compared the current politically divisive culture in the U.S. to Nazi Germany.”
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” Lucasfilm, a production company owned by Disney, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Critics immediately slammed Disney over the announcement and brought up how the company fired “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn in 2018 after his social media posts from years prior went viral. The tweets, which Gunn claimed were jokes, were about topics including rape and pedophilia.
Fox News reported that Gunn “appears to approve of the online bashing” that Carano faced on social media following her dismissal from Disney:
Amid the online battle, a tweet that defended Gunn and knocked Carano caught the attention of the filmmaker.
“Oh f*ck don’t drag @JamesGunn into this unfortunate trending topic,” entrepreneur Olga Kay wrote before celebrating Carano’s firing.
Gunn “liked” that tweet.
Gunn appeared to “unlike” the tweet following Fox News’s report. The network noted that representatives for Gunn did not respond to requests for comment for their report.
Following his dismissal from Disney in July 2018, Disney rehired Gunn in May 2019 to once again direct “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“Why the change of heart? After the firing, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn met with Gunn on multiple occasions to discuss the situation,” Deadline reported. “Persuaded by Gunn’s public apology and his handling of the situation after, Horn decided to reverse course and reinstate Gunn.”
Disney faced other backlash after firing Carano as “#CancelDisneyPlus” shot up the top of Twitter’s trending list.
Other backlash that Disney is still facing stems from “the fact that Pedro Pascal, Carano’s co-star in Disney’s ‘The Mandalorian,’ who openly cheers on Democrats on social media, made similar posts online to the ones that reportedly cost Carano her job, and yet he still remains employed with the company,” The Daily Wire reported. “One post from Pascal compared an image of Jews in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany in 1944 and then compared it to what it claimed was an image of children in cages in the U.S. in 2018.”
Donald Trump Jr. called out Disney, writing: “Same Movie as @ginacarano , same analogy, though the pic has the wrong date… I’m told it was 2010 under Obama/Biden. So does @Disney discriminate against women for doing what their male actors do or is is only discrimination against conservatives?”
Same Movie as @ginacarano, same analogy, though the pic has the wrong date… I'm told it was 2010 under Obama/Biden.
So does @Disney discriminate against women for doing what their male actors do or is is only discrimination against conservatives? https://t.co/D2q9Vo9GQX
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 11, 2021