The decision to bring James Gunn back as the director of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” is clearly not the work of one person. Disney is a massive company that likely held multiple meetings with very high-level decision-makers before offering the filmmaker a chance to come back to the franchise. That being said, if there was one person that Gunn should thank more than others, it’s likely Dave Bautista.
The actor, who plays Drax in the MCU, was the most vocal critic of the decision to fire Gunn. He was also the one who was most vocal about not doing the third ‘Guardians’ film if the director wasn’t involved. And in a new interview with Variety, Bautista explains that he meant every word of it and he was hoping his threats would result in Gunn coming back.
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“I am contractually obligated [to do the third movie], but I think that Marvel and Disney –– if I had really stood my ground and said, ‘I don’t want to do this without James’ –– I think that they are decent enough that they would’ve let me out of my contract,” Bautista said.
He continued, “I wanted to bring it home. These guys are like family to me and I wanted to be involved in the third one. I wanted to use James’ script because it’s a beautiful script. Moving forward without James was a real personal issue with me.”
Obviously, we’ll never know what would have happened with Bautista’s involvement in the film without Gunn as director. Considering the filmmaker is now re-attached to the project, the actor is likely to stay put as Drax (that is if he is brought back to life and not killed off again in “Avengers: Endgame,” which is likely considering the fact that this is Marvel Studios we’re talking about).
There’s no release date officially announced for ‘Guardians 3,’ but with “The Suicide Squad” first up for Gunn, it’s likely we won’t see the end of the space opera trilogy until 2022 at the earliest.