The shock firing of Marvel’s top VFX exec might be heading into nasty legal waters
Earlier this week, Disney fired Marvel Studios exec Victoria Alonso, one of Kevin Feige's right-hand people; now it's starting to get lawyer-y
Aux News Marvel Comics
Earlier this week—amidst much discussion in the trades, but not many murmurings elsewhere—Disney made a massive and drastic change to the leadership team at Marvel Studios: They fired Victoria Alonso, with extreme and shocking abruptness, and “for cause.” Alonso, despite not having the front-facing name recognition of her boss Kevin Feige, has been one of the biggest architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe project for a decade-plus at this point, dating all the way back to Iron Man, and eventually rising to the role of President of Physical, Post Production, VFX and Animation at the studio. In that position, she served as one of Feige’s primary right hands, with her job to ensure that both the physical production, and—increasingly importantly, and controversially—the digital production of the Marvel movies went forward smoothly.
Now, reports are emerging that Alonso, who was fired by a committee of Disney bigwigs in a decision that Feige, according to Variety, ultimately chose not to intervene in, may be pursuing legal action over her termination. That includes issuing threat-ish statements this weekend firing back at Disney’s alleged reasons for firing her, calling them “absolutely ridiculous,” and saying she was “silenced” by the company for LGBTQ+ rights advocacy.
Here’s the general state of things, from both sides: Disney says it’s firing Alonso for no other reason than her recent participation in Argentina, 1985, an Argentine legal drama that was nominated at the Oscars this year, and which the Argentina-born Alonso produced on. (Disney says she breached her contract by working on, and then continuing to promote, a non-Disney film; Alonso’s team says she had permission to do so.)
Alonso’s lawyers, meanwhile, have suggested that Alonso (who’s LGBTQ+) was fired for being one of the most vocal internal voices pushing Disney to fight back against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” laws last year. That included getting up in front of GLAAD and calling then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek out by name, saying, “So I ask you again Mr. Chapek: please respect—if we’re selling family—take a stand against all of these crazy outdated laws. Take a stand for family.” Deadline reports that Alonso was “benched” from press duties by Disney after that, and refused to participate in promotion of recent Marvel films; they also say she says she was asked to do something “reprehensible” (but undescribed) by a Disney exec that served as a last straw that led to her firing.
(Disney has taken issue with this version of events, issuing a response statement in fairly familiar “Gosh, we’re sorry you’ve got this so wrong,” language, saying that, “It’s unfortunate that Victoria is sharing a narrative that leaves out several key factors concerning her departure, including an indisputable breach of contract and a direct violation of company policy.”)
What neither side is saying (at least officially) is that Marvel’s production and post-production practices have increasingly been viewed, over the last year or two, as a shitshow, with visual effect houses reporting massive overwork and too-tight deadlines, and critics and audiences heavily criticizing the look of recent films like Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania. (THR quotes unnamed sources suggesting that Disney execs were pissed that Alonso was promoting Argentina, 1985 while the Marvel VFX pipeline was coming under increasing criticism.) Regardless of the actual causes of these pile-ups—which include some anonymous reports of harsh treatment by Alonso of VFX artists, but also, much more widely, complaints at Marvel’s blend of unfocused work requests and grueling production schedules—it’s not hard to see Alonso as a convenient target for all of the company’s recent production missteps.
The question, now, is whether all of this will end up getting aired in court. Alonso’s lawyer, Patty Glaser—who’s currently suing Disney in a whole other suit for the firing of executive producer Karyn McCarthy from Star Wars TV show The Acolyte—has certainly suggested it’s a possibility, ending a recent statement by saying, “There is a lot more to this story and Victoria will be telling it shortly—in one forum or another.” (Alonso also has a memoir, Possibility Is A Superpower, due out in May; it’ll be interesting to see how she updates the narrative in light of the last week.)
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Is that the Argentina, 1985 that made less than $1m worldwide box office? I get that Disney doesn’t want its employees spending their time making other studios a lot of money that should rightfully belong to the Mouse, but that’s obviously not what this movie is.
There’s so little confirmed info and so much speculation about what’s going on here that it’s hard to say what’s actually happening, but it does seem pretty likely that the reason given is a pretense. If the reports are true that she was a big part of Marvel’s ongoing issues with VFX studios, then they were probably just looking for the easiest/cheapest way to get rid of her. Too bad for them I guess that it’ll probably turn out to be neither.
Not sure the money is the big deal, here, as much as the conflict of interest. If you have a management position at your job, and then you produce a movie for another studio in violation of your contract, that’s a problem, even if the movie isn’t profitable.If Disney’s claims are correct, and Alonzo is someone who breaks the rules, then counts on her status within the company to force them to make exceptions for her, she isn’t entitled to that forbearance in perpetuity.
I think the money is the conflict of interest there, though. I mean, in general, why is anyone going to produce a movie for another studio other than to make money on some side project while cutting out their employer? That’s why pretty much any contract would include multiple boilerplate Do Not Compete clauses. But in this specific instance, there’s a perfectly clear and understandable reason why she would be producing and promoting such a movie: It’s a movie about Argentina, and she’s Argentinian. It’s possible the movie doesn’t get made or distributed as widely without her assistance, but in any case it’s a personal project for her, not a financial one. It’s the sort of project that even if her contract does expressly forbid her producing/promoting movies for other studios, she might very well have been given permission to do it anyway from some muckety muck above her. And indeed, that’s what she’s alleging. I’m not so sure of the legality of being given permission to do something contractually forbidden, but I’d think if she has something in writing it would probably be a pretty good defense.I’m just now looking at the Deadline article which has a lot more info than this one does (quelle surprise). It looks like at least one source is saying she didn’t get initial permission to produce, and was only allowed to under the condition that she not promote it. But it also looks like they’re alleging that her promoting the film led to substantial delays in VFX for most of Phase 4, even causing some release date changes, which I have a hard time believing.
I think there at the end is why you’re wrong about the money. When you’re an employee, particularly a highly-compensated management employee, any exclusivity or non-competes aren’t just about exclusivity over profits you generate, they’re exclusivity for your attention, and in Hollywood, for your prestige. If you’re working on an Oscar campaign to get a rival studio’s movie to win Best Foreign Language Film (which would be a prestige win for Amazon, even if it isn’t directly big money), that’s time you’re not spending on your job for the studio that employs you. Now, is it enough time that everything at Marvel “fell behind?” Who knows? But in most companies, even if they approve of your side hustles and hobbies (there’s dispute how much they approved, but it is generally legal for parties to carve out an exception to something forbidden in a contract, if they can all agree to it), no one wants to hear about them when the area you’re working on is lagging. Ever. They want you at work, getting things back on track, and if your hobbies suffer, they suffer.I forget where I read it, but apparently folks at Disney were upset about her appearance at the Oscars, where the only stuff she was keen to promote was her side project and herself. Mind you, Wakanda Forever was up for awards, including one directly in her department (Best VFX, where it lost to Avatar), but she was there to promote an Amazon movie. That’s the kind of thing that will rankle people even if you’re doing a great job, and will really chafe when your company’s first big tentpole of the year is underperforming, and poor VFX are catching a big part of the blame.
This still doesn’t discount the fact that joe-everyday keyboard warrior has no fucking clue what they’re talking about when they say they don’t like MCU CGI. Was the CGI bad in Ant-Man, or was Feige misguided in deciding that the film be set in a pink and purple barfball of goo?
I’m pretty sure its the latter and people keep mistaking that for “bad CGI” and the setting is actually probably Kevin Feige’s fault so this is all just shitty and reaks of “we don’t actually understands the complaints of our audiences”.
This is Kevin Feige we’re talking about – the guy who was amazed when Chloe Zhao showed him what outside looked like without CGI…
The special effects in these marvel movies are bad compared to marvel movies 20 years ago, compared to something like avatar 2 way of the water the MCU is playing t-ball in the mcu
Immediately after she was fired allegations of her being abusive to staff and others came out. Couple that with people shitting on Disneys/Marvel’s CGI lately. So we have an unpopular person whose product is crap*. So disney was looking for a reason to get rid of her and found one*not solely her fault and disney constantly pumping shit out doesnt help.
It’s weird that people think Disney would need a pretext to fire someone for doing a bad job, especially when they just fired their CEO for doing a bad job.
And they had to pay him 20 million in severance because they didnt really fire him for cause, just sucking at his job. Disney is searching for a reason for Alonso so they dont have to pay her, and they gave her one by violating her contract by promoting Argentina
It seems like they probably fired her in part for all the accusations of abusing the visual effects houses to get the product out quicker and quicker, but they can’t say that because they likely encouraged and demanded this type of “get it done now” behavior, and it’s only after workers complained that she became the target. So they’re saying it was something else which could “technically” be grounds for firing.
I don’t know. I’m a healthcare worker and I worked for a particular non profit and there was a conflict of interest clause in the contract that said if I worked for another company while working for them I’d be out the door. That was for a charity. You think Disney doesn’t take these things as seriously?
Isn’t this how they got rid of Serena Southerlyn?
If Disney’s narrative is accurate and supported by documentation, then I don’t think there’s much Alonso can do about that. If they wanted to fire her over the VFX issues and broken relationships with these effects houses but for whatever reason couldn’t, and found a way to fire her by citing her side hustle, that would be interesting. But if the evidence still supports her firing was still proper because of her outside work, it wouldn’t be anything else.
I assumed it was about the VFX stuff, and I figured Disney would just throw her under the bus for that. Strange that they’re publicly saying it was for violating her exclusivity clause.
If they fire her for violating her contract they probably owe her less severance and it is pretty easy to show in a legal fight. If they fire her for being bad at her job, or for the people under her doing a bad job then she might be entitled to more money and it is harder for Disney to prove that it is true. And no, a million fans saying they didn’t like the CGI in Quantumania isn’t going to cut it. That leaves them more open to charges that she was fired for her activism.
Would those charges be legal charges? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I really don’t know if one can be fired by Disney for tweeting about Disney.
Depends on what you mean by “legal.” I am not a lawyer and don’t live in Florida.If they fire her for being queer, they might be violating federal discrimination laws. I doubt DeSantistan grants her that protection. I don’t know if discrimination laws protect people who advocate for protected classes, but I doubt it. Certainly people here would support Disney if they fired her for advocating against trans care or something.They can probably fire her without any reason at all in Florida which is an employer friendly state. Then they probably owe her severance per her contract. It also is her responsibility to prove she was fired for being a lesbian. Disney makes that case harder for her by showing other reasons why they fired her. “Breach of contract” is more concrete than “she was bad at her job” and can be supported with much less documentation.But if they fire her for cause (breach of contract) then they contractually probably have to pay her less severance (or none) AND it is a ready made defense against her suing them for violating federal law and firing her because of her sexuality.
Rightly or wrongly, I don’t think Disney at large agrees with the VFX criticism.
The breach of contract would be legally cleaner and also Disney won’t have to admit there are problems with their VFX. Firing her for VFX issues acknowledges that there are issues, and I don’t see Disney wanting to crap on its own movies.
I had the same thought after reading the Deadline article which essentially says that Disney agreed to adjust Alonso’s contract after she had already started working on her passion project but specifically decreed that she could not promote the movie. If that’s true and if it’s easy to prove she did promote the movie (seems like it should be), not sure what case she is going to have.
“Alonso (who’s LGBTQ+)”.Unless Alonso has specifically expressed a dislike of the word, maybe just say “queer”, which is pretty well accepted socially and academically these days? Otherwise you’re suggesting she’s all of these identities simultaneously, which I suppose is possible, but I suspect unlikely.
Just…stop. Stop with this identity bullshit. None of it matters in this case. She wasn’t fired for her identity issues. She was fired for fucking up.And stop trying so hard to find ways to be offended on behalf of other people.
Uh, pretty sure Lesbian would be better. It’s what the “L” stands for.
Has Alonso confirmed she’s a lesbian? She could be (B)i, or (T)rans, or genderfluid or intersex (+). I figured perhaps she’d merely identified as other than cishet and that’s why the Club was using the clunky initialisation, in which case I’m suggesting queer is just easier.
I’ve seen this more than a few times, and it’s really the sort of thing that I think any decent editor should outright ban. Of course, that wouldn’t include noted fan blog The AV Club, but I’m pretty sure I’ve also seen it at publications that presumably do have editors. It’s like calling someone BIPOC. The terms exist as a catchall for talking about issues in a general sense, but presumably any specific individual identifies primarily as only one or two categories.
Yep. I’ve listened to the discourse about using broad terms such as BIPOC, Asian, or Indigenous the last few years, and while I could intellectually understand its importance, it was one of the areas where I realized I couldn’t really experience the frustration of those affected and would just have to rely on trusting their lived experiences.So, as a person represented by a single letter in “LGBTQ+,” a think I had a bit of an a-ha moment of what it can actually feel like, if only for a single instance.
“Otherwise you’re suggesting she’s all of these identities simultaneously”
You don’t really believe that, do you? Are you really so fucking stupid?Do you think other people are as astoundingly stupid as you are?
More 👏 lesbian 👏 Latina 👏 capitalist 👏 slave drivers 👏
Slavery is typically considered a pre-capitalist mode of production.
Typically considered, yet in reality still an enormous part of the modern capitalist economy. Clothes, phones, cotton, tobacco, palm oil, coffee, salt… hell, every year the World Cocoa Foundation puts out another report designed to obfuscate how poorly they’ve done at reducing the number of literal child slaves in their supply chain.
My understanding is that some countries like Mauritania try to skirt international norms on slavery but they’re very much the exception to the rule and in most places it’s just very poor people willing to do the work because the alternative is worse.https://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/06/what_ended_serf.html
Also US prison labor
slave drivernoun
1 an overseer of enslaved laborers and enforcer of hierarchy and discipline in the institution of chattel slavery.2 a hard taskmaster
(Alonso also has a memoir, Possibility Is A Superpower, due out in May; it’ll be interesting to see how she updates the narrative in light of the last week.)Considering that it’s currently set to be published by Hyperion Avenue (which is Disney’s book publishing branch), it’ll be interesting to see if it even gets released.Cartoon Brew also had an article on her sudden and unexpected departure (as it was being reported last Friday), including claims that she maintained a “blacklist of vfx workers” and made a habit of “pixel-fucking”, one example of which was succinctly described in the comments by Mark from Newton:Let me guess, she made decisions three weeks after the time for such decisions to be made had passed, still insisted on the changes being made even though it meant literally a six-week swing, (both in erasing the 3 weeks worth of work and taking another 3 weeks that could’ve been used moving ahead), and in the end, they were all “six-of-one,half-a dozen-of-another” changes that no one anywhere noticed or made a single difference to the quality of the movie. But, hey, she justified her existence and proved who’s boss, right?So there’s lots of unpleasant behavior being alleged by and about both sides in this matter. But in the end, regardless of the details, it almost certainly boils down to Disney execs looking to find a scapegoat for recent MCU problems.
Oh I hate this they made her into a scapegoat this is stupid. It kinda of sounds like Feige made her take a bullet for him. Ew.
Something something rolls downhill.
What’s even sillier is that nobody actually knows what they’re talking about when they complain about the VFX for Quantumania etc. It isn’t an issue with it not looking like good VFX its an issue of people just not liking totally fabricated worlds in their films. Which is FEIGE’s stuff and he did nothing and watched her get fired.
Well fuck Kevin Feige.
So basically, Disney is telling us “Don’t worry, this one person was responsible for every single problem you’ve had with us lately, and now she’s gone.” Well, I sure can’t think of any reason to question that.
“So basically, Disney is telling us “Don’t worry, this one person was responsible for every single problem you’ve had with us lately, and now she’s gone.””
No?
So, Disney’s story is that they fired her -in March 2023- because she ‘illegally’ produced a movie over a year ago.If that was their stance, why would they have not fired her back when she was actually about to produce the movie, rather than after the movie was produced, released, and nominated for awards?What ridiculous BS.
When people first started to complain about Marvel’s VFX, some reports mentioned that Alonso was so powerful she could blacklist people out of the industry if she didn’t like them or their work. If this is true, this is awful behavior and I’m glad she lost her job.
I’m sure none of it has anything to do with the poor quality of VFX in so many recent Marvel projects.
Thankfully this is the only headache with which Disney currently has to deal.
Alonso (who’s LGBTQ+)
I don’t think one person can be all of those.
It’s like the EGOT. Only a rare few can achieve it
Imagine being so fucking dumb you can’t get past this. Like, you’re so fucking stupid that you just can’t get past someone using an accepted catch-all term.
Fuck you all the way, ok?
Why not?
My very uninformed guess is that this is one of those situations where it’s a scrum of assholes. She’s an asshole who is emblematic of some of the many issues facing the FX industry and she got fired by an asshole company who found an excuse to do so. Assholes all the way around, no one to root for.
It sounds like at a time Marvel was busier than ever—and cracks were starting to show in the workflow, PR issues with VFX houses, less than stellar finalized productions, etc.—the person who was running much of the production was taking loads of time off to work on a personal project at another company. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
Fuuu-huuuuuck Disney.
Can we talk about the elephant in the room: why the fuck Kevin Feige always got to wear his stupid baseball cap everywhere?
Male pattern baldness, that he is uncomfortable displaying, I assume.
But wouldn’t baldness be better than looking like this:
So did she breach her contract by producing Agentina 1985, or not? That’s the only real legal reason to let her go. If she did, she can blame her firing on whatever she likes, but the contract’s a contract and you shouldn’t be surprised if you get reprimanded for breaking it.If the contract wasn’t legally breached, well, that makes this more interesting.
She wasn’t whipping her employees hard enough.
I’m just now realizing that Kevin Feige and Paul Feig are two different people.
Does this means Disney is going to start paying their VFX artists fair wages and have them work reasonable hours all because they fired this one person?