Tim Burton's diversity comments blew up Twitter

Tim Burton trended on Twitter Thursday with his explanation of why the cast of his new movie is overwhelmingly white.

The macabre filmmaker, who's out promoting Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, got people talking after he told a Bustle reporter this:

"Nowadays, people are talking about it more, (but) things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct, like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black — I used to get more offended by that than just — I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies."

Basically, he answered a question about onscreen diversity by saying that there doesn't need to be so much.

Samuel L. Jackson, who is the only lead actor of color in Burton's adaptation of the Ransom Riggs book, told Bustle that he noticed the lack of diversity in the movie.

"I may have been the first (black character in a Tim Burton movie), I don’t know, or the most prominent in that particular way, but it happens the way it happens," Jackson said. "I don’t think it’s any fault of his or his method of storytelling, it’s just how it’s played out. Tim’s a really great guy."

Well, people on social media had something to say about Burton's views on diversity, too. A sampling of tweeted reactions — mostly dismissive, but also supportive — that have propelled the Twitter trend: