Rian Johnson explains decision to delete thousands of tweets days after James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy firing

Rian Johnson has explained that he deleted 20,000 tweets to pre-empt internet trolls in the wake of James Gunn's firing at Disney.

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi director gave his Twitter account a thorough scrub in the days after Gunn had been removed from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 for offensive posts, which contained jokes about paedophilia and rape, that were sent out between 2008-2012.

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“No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad,” Johnson tweeted, in response to a post from The Mary Sue which pondered the reasons for his decision. “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.”

The move represents a growing sense of anxiety in Hollywood, where a zero-tolerance policy about offensive statements is being implemented by major studios.

Gunn's firing followed network ABC's (a subsidiary of Disney) decision to fire Roseanne Barr from her self-titled sitcom after she posted a racist tweet about former White House advisor Valerie Jarrett.

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