Evangeline Lilly has publicly called out The Walt Disney Company over its latest round of Marvel layoffs, accusing the studio of discarding the artists who built its empire and replacing them with artificial intelligence.
The actress, who played Hope van Dyne, the Wasp, across four Marvel films, took to Instagram to voice her anger after learning that Marvel’s visual development department had been among those hardest hit in company-wide cuts that reduced Disney’s workforce by around eight per cent.
“SHAME ON YOU for turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away,” she wrote in her caption.
In the accompanying video, Lilly explained that she had reached out directly to Andy Park, the artist who designed the Wasp suit she wore in the original 2015 Ant-Man film, to confirm what she had seen reported. He confirmed he had been let go.
“I can’t quite believe that Disney have let go of the artists who brought the current Marvel Universe to life through their imagination and their genius,” she said.
“That the people who invented these characters in the first place, who designed them in the first place, are now being replaced by AI. AI that will take their designs and take what those artists created and use it to create iterations of that.”
She was direct about where she stood on the issue.
“I am so sorry Andy, and I am so sorry to every single one of the artists who were let go in the 1000 artists that Disney fired, and particularly the entire team at Marvel who have been considered obsolete now after building the Marvel empire.”
She added that the work these artists produced “are human creations, and they shouldn’t be stolen by tech giants so that their robots can replicate them. I think it’s disgusting and horrible, and I stand with all the artists and Andy.”
The cuts at Marvel affected most of its departments, including film and television production, comics, franchise, finance, legal and visual development, the latter being particularly hard hit, following a smaller round of redundancies in 2024.
