Chris Pratt On The Fallout Of James Gunn's Firing: "It's Not An Easy Time"

As the fallout of the James Gunn firing stretches on, the Guardians of the Galaxy cast stand by their director. Soon after Disney fired Gunn over old offensive tweets, the cast members of the first and second Guardians of the Galaxy films penned a letter to Disney in support of Gunn and his reinstatement as director.

But in the month since the firing, Disney has remained silent on the matter, which leaves the returning Guardians of the Galaxy members in a state of limbo. And for the cast members who were close friends with Gunn, like star Chris Pratt, it makes this waiting period particularly hard.

It's "not an easy time" for Pratt and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy cast as the waiting period following Gunn's firing continues. While the cast is contractually obligated to reprise their roles for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, actors such as Dave Bautista have demanded to be released from their contracts if Gunn is not reinstated. Bautista is the only actor to publicly state this intention, but Pratt suggested to the Associated Press that the rest of the Guardians cast may be on the same page. He told AP:

"It's not an easy time. We all love James and he's a good friend of ours, but we also really love playing the Guardians of the Galaxy. It's a complicated situation for everybody. And you know, we just want to move forward and do what's right and be the best people we can be."

"All I know is we put a lot of time, thought and effort into the statement that we released about it. And I think we all kind of want that statement to be essentially what we have to say about it. And we were pretty clear and honest about how we feel."

Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel and five other main stars of the franchise signed the open letter addressed to Disney, which articulated the cast's support of the director in the wake of his firing, and demanded that Gunn be reinstated for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. When Gunn was fired, he had finished writing the script for the third Guardians of the Galaxy film and was set to begin filming this fall. Disney has not yet announced a director to replace Gunn, though reports of turmoil behind the scenes between Marvel and Disney suggests that Marvel Studios is not happy with Disney's knee-jerk decision in the wake of a bad-faith attack against Gunn based on his old tweets, which contained jokes about pedophilia. Gunn apologized for the tweets, which were published before he was hired by Disney to direct the 2014 smash hit, Guardians of the Galaxy.

It seems like the Guardians of the Galaxy cast is just as anxious as us to hear what Disney decides to do with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Will they decide to reinstate Gunn? Will they push the movie back? Or will the cast make the shocking decision to walk? We'll have to wait and see.