Marvel accused of ‘forgetting’ to tell Avengers VFX artists release date was brought forward a month

’Marvel is the worst example of a lot of the problems in the industry,’ one employee claimed

Marvel is being accused of negligence by VFX employees who worked on the Avengers films.

The blockbuster studio, which recently spread its output to TV, is behind some of the biggest cinematic releases of the past 10 years.

However, VFX artists have accused Marvel bosses of overworking them and, in one case, forgetting to tell them about an extremely close deadline.

In a Gizmodo article, a VFX artist named David, who worked on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame said that his team only realised that the release date – and their deadline – for the films had been brought forward by an entire month after reading an article online.

“The worst was when Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame were coming out,” David said, before alleging: “They actually bumped up that release by a month but they hadn’t told us.”

He continued: “I remember being on the floor with my team and one of my artists comes to me and says, ‘Hey, you see this?’ and he shows me the article saying Marvel bumped the release date up a month.”

According to David, Marvel eventually told the team they had “forgotten” to alert them to the news.

“So we found out from a press release that we had one less month to work on all these shots,” he claimed.

Another VFX employee called Marvel “ the worst example of a lot of the problems in the industry”, adding: “It would be one thing if sometimes it was really bad, sometimes it wasn’t… But with Marvel, it seems like every single time it’s the same thing.”

The article follows previous allegations that Marvel does not provide VFX artists with great working conditions, which led to criticism of Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi who highlighted, and seemingly mocked, a VFX error in the film.

VFX artists are accusing Marvel of negligence (Marvel Studios)

The majority of claims specifically levied against Marvel come from a Reddit thread titled: “I am quite frankly sick and tired of working on Marvel shows!”, which is filled with complaints by former VFX artists who have supposedly worked on MCU projects.

One allegation, by a user named Independent-Ad419, read: “Marvel has probably the worst methodology of production and VFX management out there. They can never fix the look for the show before more than half the allocated time for the show is over. The artists working on Marvel shows are definitely not paid equivalent to the amount of work they put in.”

The claims led to another article published by The Gamer earlier this year, titled: “VFX Artists Are Refusing To Work With Marvel Due To Stress And Unrealistic Deadlines.”

Former VFX artist Dhruv Govill, who worked on Guardians of the Galaxy, shared the article on Twitter, writing: “Working on #Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They’re a horrible client, and I’ve seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings.”

The Independent has contacted Disney and Marvel Studios for comment.