Things don’t appear to be going well for Hollywood Director James Gunn recently.
First, the 51-year-old filmmaker was fired by Disney for old tweet-jokes related to pedophilia and now, his Starsky and Hutch reboot has been canned by Amazon Studios. Although it was speculated that Amazon may drop the rebooted series due to the recent controversy, a spokesperson for the company claimed that this wasn’t the reason for its demise.
“We passed on the project completely months ago,” the spokesperson said. “There was no statement. This is the same for any other project we do not move forward with.”
This is an unfortunate revelation, given that Amazon had purchased the show last August and had allegedly begun development. The comedy cop reboot was going to be executive-produced by James Gunn and written by his brothers, Brian and Mark Gunn.
“Chekhov said if you have a gun in the room, it’s going to go off. We can’t wait to see what three Gunns do with Starsky & Hutch,” Joe Lewis, Amazon’s head of comedy, drama and VR, said in a statement at the time.
This news follows Gunn’s firing from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (and likely, blacklisted for all Disney projects in the foreseeable future). The firing caused a social media frenzy, with some users thinking it unfair that the director was being punished for tweets he wrote ten years prior. Others felt that the decision was just, suspecting Gunn of being a real-life pedophile as well as an edgy joker.
James Gunn has been active in the film industry since 1995, when he wrote the independent romantic horror film Tromeo and Juliet and even acted a part in the project. His first gig as a movie director was in the obscure short film, Hamster PSA. However, his first major Hollywood directing role would come in 2006’s Slither, which he also wrote.
Are you gutted that the Starsky and Hutch reboot has been axed? Let us know in the comments below…
