James Gunn Reportedly Kicked Out of Guardians of the Galaxy for Joining DC
Reports claim that James Gunn will not continue work on I Am Groot or other Guardians of the Galaxy spin-offs following his joining DC as the new co-head.
After years of having been associated with Marvel, James Gunn delivered his superhero magnum opus in the form of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. However, it seems like he won’t be able to develop it further even despite already having the second season of the spin-off show I Am Groot ( which he produced) underway.
While Gunn was directly involved with all Guardians of the Galaxy projects to this date, his time has allegedly come to an end. The director won’t be even continuing work on Season 2 of I Am Groot and won’t be involved with future spin-offs, either.
According to The Direct, James Gunn “is not involved in I AM GROOT Season 2, making it Marvel Studios' first Guardians-led project to be made without Gunn.”
Allegedly, this decision was affected by James Gunn joining DC Studios as the new co-CEO as Marvel Studios is virtually forced to distance itself from the man who’s now in charge of their main competitor. However, Marvel fans don’t appear too concerned with the director’s departure — at least, when it comes to I Am Groot S2.
Especially considering the format of the show: in the comments, fans are pointing out that each episode of I Am Groot S1 was like five minutes, three of which were dedicated to the credits. Sure, James Gunn was featured as the series’s executive producer, but realistically, he hardly had anything to do with it at all to begin with.
“I doubt Gunn was all that involved in the first season. He just got an executive producer credit because he was still with Marvel at that point. Now he's switched sides so there's no way they were going to keep giving him credit,” X (formerly Twitter) user CFSTRAN suggests.
Anyway, we’ll hardly hear about any Gunn and Marvel Studios collaborations at all in the future: as the director is now dedicating himself to DC, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was most likely his last MCU project. In the upcoming years, Gunn already has a lot on his plate since he’s aiming to reboot the entirety of the DCU.