Evangeline Lilly has taken to social media to publicaly call out Disney following recent layoffs that reportedly impacted employees at Marvel Studios, including longtime creative contributor Andy Park.The actor, known for playing the tole of Hope van Dyne aka the Wasp in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’, took to her Instagram handle to express her outrage after coming across the post. In a video post, Lilly confirmed reports that alleged around 1,000 staffers were let go across the company.Confirming the news she said, “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?’” she said.She went on to add, “He said, ‘Yeah, it’s true.’ 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.”In a strongly worded caption accompanying the video, Lilly slammed the production house and its parent company for “turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away.”She also raised concerns about the growing use of AI in creative industries. She asked, “Where are the laws that REMOVE all human art from the AI bank?!? 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?!?!?”Lilly went on to pay tribute to Marvel’s creative community, writing, “To the @marvelstudios artists who designed and brought to life the glory days of Marvel…I salute you. I was there. I know what you did. I know how passionately you worked around the clock to make magic happen. You are the magicians, no matter what the Wizards of our new Oz make it look like going forward. I will never forget.”Lilly made her MCU debut in the 2015 film ‘Ant-Man’ and went on to reprise her role in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’. She was last seen in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’.
