A couple of days ago I was the first to report on the YouTube video that exposed that Star Wars director Rian Johnson had deleted thousands and thousands of tweets following Disney firing James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Marvel Studios, with the news having since gone viral.
Rian Johnson deleted upwards of 20,000 tweets as his tweet count went from 22.3k to 1,126 in a short period of time.
It’s unknown what the tweets featured, but James Gunn was fired by Disney for tweets from ten years ago that surfaced joking about rape and pedophila, which caused Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn to release the following statement: “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him.”
Now since I first reported on it and word has spread, Rian Johnson has taken to Twitter to commont on the deleted tweets.
“No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad,” Rian Johnson said. “But it’s nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a ‘why not?’ move.”
Regarding how Rian Johnson was able to delete so many tweets in such a short period of time, he offered: “There are apps that do it literally with the flip of a switch… Oh there are apps that make it super easy.”
The controvery also saw some fans make light of the situation, with Star Wars actor Mark Hamill chiming in:
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) July 26, 2018
Following Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Disney named Rian Johnson on a new as-of-yet untitled Star Wars trilogy.
