Evangeline Lilly has criticised Disney for firing Marvel employees as part of company-wide layoffs, accusing them of turning their back on the people who built their success.
The actor, is the star of the Ant-Man films, as well as appearing in Avengers: Endgame. She took to Instagram to record a video sharing her thoughts on the news that Disney will be laying off 1,000 employees across all divisions, including 15 from Marvel Studios (per Variety), largely from the visual development team.
Among them was Andy Park, a friend of the actor’s who served as Marvel’s director of visual development, and was with the company for 16 years.
This has led to speculation the company may be pivoting to AI for its special effects, although Marvel have made no official announcement confirming this.
The video, posted yesterday (Thursday April 30), shows Lilly playing a video reporting the redundancies, before saying: “I reached out to my good friend Andy Park, who was the genius behind creating the original Wasp super-suit and concept drawings, and I said, ‘Is this true? Is this really what’s happening?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s true.’”
She continued: “I can’t quite believe that… that Disney has let go of the artists who brought the Marvel Universe to life through their genius and that the people who invented these characters and who designed them are being replaced by AI. AI that will take their designs and take what they created and use it to create iterations of that. I am so sorry, Andy. I am so sorry to every one of the artists who were let go.”
Lilly also wrote in her Instagram caption: “Disney, SHAME ON YOU for turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away,” before questioning the laws surrounding replacing human workers with AI.
“Where are the laws that REMOVE all human art from the AI bank?!?” she asked. “Why do they get to steal our brilliance and use it to make executives rich while the artists responsible for feeding their robots go hungry?? Disgusting. California lawmakers…where are you?!?!?”
The official reason for the redundancies is Marvel’s change in release strategy, which will reduce the overall output of movies and TV shows. At its peak, the Marvel Cinematic Universe released four films a year, but has only released three in the last two years as part of a plan to reduce audience fatigue with the genre.