James Gunn has had no shortage of defenders since his firing from working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and the most recent to voice his support comes from a different corner of the MCU. Mike Colter, who plays Luke Cage is the Netflix series of the same name posted a reply to James Gunn's last Twitter post, where the director apologized for the jokes that resulted in his firing, by saying he thinks Gunn will be brought back and that he doesn't believe everybody should be punished for old comments.
Mike Colter's comments have been echoed by many in the week plus since it was announced by Disney that they were severing their relationship with James Gunn in regards to his directing of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and his work on the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While nobody has defended the jokes that were made, many feel that considering Gunn had apologized previously for the comments, and they were made nearly 10 years ago, when Gunn was, by many accounts, a very different person than he is now, he should be able to move forward without being punished for the person he used to be.
The support of the MCU's Luke Cage comes after James Gunn received the support of the entire cast of the movies he directed when all of the core Guardians of the Galaxy cast signed and published an open letter which supported Gunn. While the letter itself never specifically asked Disney to reconsider its decision to fire Gunn, several of the actors supported the idea in their associated posts. A petition asking Disney to rehire the director has amassed 360,000 signatures.
While Disney had made no indication that they might rehire James Gunn at this point, they've also made no other public move regarding Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, so it's anybody's guess what will happen next. The film was scheduled for release in 2020 and was very likely to be the next MCU film released after Spider-Man: Far From Home in the summer of 2019. Gunn had finished at least a first draft of the script for the project and at this point, Marvel Studios could try to start from scratch, hire a new director to film Gunn's script, or scrap the entire movie. We just don't know.
At some point, Marvel Studios will announce something. It may be the rehiring of James Gunn, it may be the hiring of a new director, it may be a slate of planned movies that simply doesn't include Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The MCU is bigger than one man and it will certainly carry on, but how it will look when it does is impossible to say right now.
