Inside Victoria Alonso’s Shocking Exit From Marvel Studios
Behind the shock termination of veteran Marvel Studios executive Victoria Alonso.
variety.com
While the cause of Alonso's termination is unclear, the sources said, the decision was made by a consortium including Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman, to whom all of Marvel Studios reports. Alonso's longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige was not involved in the process, another person familiar with the exit added. Feige, who felt mired in an impossible situation, ultimately did not intervene. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added.
Numerous sources familiar with Marvel pointed to the tremendous pressure the unit has been under over the past few years to deliver compelling content not just to theaters, but in the form of new streaming shows intended to bolster Disney+. In 2021 and 2022, Marvel unloaded an unprecedented torrent of comic book adventures, releasing 17 titles — seven movies, eight streaming series and two TV specials — over 23 months.
That breakneck distribution schedule, a product of the pandemic and the need to constantly feed Disney+, was not of Alonso's making, and Marvel was far from the only studio tasked with delivering feature-level content for a newly launched streaming service. But it was Alonso's job to get each of those titles through Marvel's gargantuan post-production process, and by the summer of 2022, cracks began to show in the company's seemingly impervious armor.
"The show I was on really struggled because it was an established character whose powers they were reconceiving for the MCU," the artist said on the condition of anonymity. Most complaints, they said, came down to one refrain: "Marvel doesn't figure shit out beforehand."
Would honestly recommend just reading the full article, tough one to select excerpts fromA different senior VFX artist threw cold water on the idea that Alonso would single out individual artists: "The idea of a very senior exec terrifying rank and file artists, per some reports, feels a bit off," they told Variety. Above the line, three different up-and-coming actors in the MCU agreed that Alonso was only a supportive force on set.
"She was the epitome of professional, and knows her stuff," said one former Disney film executive.