Marvel Studios may not have had much of a presence at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, but that didn’t stop them from dropping one of the biggest pieces of news to hit last weekend. Sadly, it wasn’t of the exciting variety, and it involved one of the studios’ golden franchises, Guardians of the Galaxy.

Some old tweets of writer-director James Gunn had been dug up, and in them, Gunn made some pretty crass pedophile jokes. It didn’t take long for Disney to take action, and soon after, he was removed from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a film that was set to begin production this coming January.

RELATED – James Gunn Fired From Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

Of course, this saddened plenty of fans around the world, with some upset at the words Gunn wrote in the decade-old tweets, and some a bit indignant at the idea of him being fired at all. Many prominent folks have come to the helmer’s aid (though Gunn himself has made no excuses for his words), and now, there is a petition to have Disney re-hire Gunn for the upcoming superhero sequel.

Here’s what the description from petitioner Chandler Edwards states:

“I’m smart enough to know this most likely won’t change anything but hopefully, this could get Disney to realize the mistake they made and not do it again in the future.”

“I agree on the point that if people say a bunch of stupid s**t while working for a studio, the studio has full right to fire him over the possible controversy. This situation is very different though as he made these jokes years before he was working for Disney and also the fact that they were jokes. I agree with most, including Gunn himself that the jokes were sh**ty and un-funny but they were still jokes, it wasn’t an opinion or a statement, it was just a bad attempt at being funny.”

“The other thing is if you do this to Gunn you have to do it for all the other directors who have said some crappy joke sometime in their life, which is all of them, cause I doubt there’s one human on this planet who hasn’t made a shitty joke once or twice in there life.”

“If Marvel would come to their senses and re-hire Gunn that would be great but if all we can do is have proof by your signatures that Disney made a mistake i would still count that as a win.”

So far, the petition has garnered nearly 200,000 supporters and has been endorsed by Guardians franchise star Dave Bautista. Do you think this is something that could (or should) change? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: Change.org