Disney settles with former Marvel VFX exec it abruptly fired
It’s a big week for settlements as Disney decides to shell out millions to an exec they fired less than a month ago
Settlements are all the rage these days. Everyone’s settling left, right, and center. Hot off the news that Dominion will settle with Fox News for the hefty sum of not getting Tucker on the stand, Variety reports that the Marvel Studios executive Disney fired last month won’t be going to court over wrongful termination after all. Disney and the ousted exec, Victoria Alonso, have settled for an undisclosed multimillion-dollar amount. All’s well that ends well.
The lawsuit centered around the dismissal of the now-former President of Physical, Post Production, VFX, and Animation. Alonso’s firing came at a difficult time for Disney. Beset with criticisms of exploiting and overworking the digital effects artists that make the brown magic of Marvel movies a reality, Disney laid off the woman who was supposedly in charge of that department “for cause.”
The cause, as Disney saw it, was that Alonso, who had been at Kevin Fiegie’s side since the first Iron Man, was a producer on Academy Award nominee Argentina, 1985, a passion project for the Argentina-born Alonso. Disney said her participation in the film, produced by Disney-competitor Amazon, was in breach of contract, while Alonso said Disney gave permission to work on the movie. Though she spent much of awards season promoting the film as Disney took heat for its treatment of effects workers—something, for what it’s worth, Alonso has been accused of as well.
Alonso saw it differently, saying that Disney was silencing an LGBTQ+ woman of color as the company was battling Floria’s “Don’t Say Gay” laws. For her part, Alonso was a vocal critic of the bigoted legislation, calling on then-CEO Bob Chapek to “take a stand for family” and fight the laws. Disney denied this charge.
Today, it’s all moot because the two warring factions came to an undisclosed multimillion-dollar peace treaty.