Lilly Blasts Disney Over Marvel Layoffs, AI Pivot
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- Evangeline Lilly posted an Instagram video blasting Disney for firing Marvel employees, singling out the layoff of Andy Park, the studio's director of visual development who spent 16 years at the company.
- The cuts were part of a broader Disney layoff of approximately 1,000 staffers company-wide, and Lilly said the artists who "brought the Marvel Universe to life" are being "replaced by AI."
- In her Instagram caption, Lilly wrote "Disney, SHAME ON YOU for turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away" and demanded laws to "REMOVE all human art from the AI bank."
- Andy Park announced his layoff on April 20 on social media, writing: "16 years, 40+ films, and 15 films led as Director of Visual Development, I couldn't be prouder of the history we made."
- Sources told Variety that Marvel plans to keep a small visual development team, hiring artists on a project-by-project basis, and remains committed to working with visual development artists on its projects.
- Lilly has played Hope van Dyne/Wasp in the MCU since 2015's "Ant-Man," with appearances in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" (2018), "Avengers: Endgame" (2019), and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" (2023).
Why it matters: A franchise star publicly breaking with Disney over layoffs—and explicitly naming AI replacement and California lawmakers—spotlights the deepening conflict between studio cost-cutting and the human creative labor that drove Marvel's 40+ film run. For Disney, the optics of a lead actor accusing it of betraying the artists behind that run could harden labor and regulatory scrutiny at a moment when AI policy in Hollywood is actively being contested.
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