Marvel Stars Revolt Against Disney’s AI Future

Adario Strange
May 1, 2026

MAN AND ROBOTS: A weekly column from MARS Magazine on AI, Hollywood, and the future of work.

🎬 China Launches the AI Feature Film Era

1. China isn’t waiting for Hollywood to give the world the green light on major feature films created using AI video, one of its biggest film distributors plans to pioneer the space. China’s Bona Film Group is teaming up with ByteDance to use Seedance 2.0 to produce a 90-minute science fiction film that will be released in major Chinese theaters. The project’s national theatrical release wouldn’t be possible without the sign-off from the China Film Administration (CFA), an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that reviews domestic films and approves releases. Now that the Bona Film Group has that approval, all systems are go. Although the film will simulate live-action, it will officially be classified as animation by the CFA. The name of the film is Sanxingdui: Future Memories and will be the first AI-generated film approved for release by the Chinese government.

Why It Matters: Most Americans aren’t familiar with the Bona Film Group name, but they should be. Thanks to a deal with U.S.-based TSG Entertainment, Bona Film Group has helped produce and participated in the box office profits of major Hollywood films, including The Martian, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Independence Day: Resurgence, War for the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Covenant, X-Men: Apocalypse, as well as the Avatar and Deadpool franchises. Bona Film Group isn’t some indie studio experimenting with AI, this is one of the biggest players in cinema, so its move to legitimize AI video on the big screen will send a message to U.S. studios, even if Sanxingdui: Future Memories never hits American theaters. That message? Hollywood can slow walk its way into AI-generated films if it wants to, but that will only give Chinese film studios like Bona even more time to perfect the emerging genre.

🎭 Marvel Superhero AI Rebuke

2. “I can’t quite believe that Disney has let go of the artists who brought the Marvel Universe to life through their imagination and their genius. That the people who invented these characters, who designed them in the first place, are now being replaced by AI. AI that will take their designs and take what those artists created and use it to create iterations of that…” [then in text accompanying the video] “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?”
-Evangeline Lilly, actress, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Lost, on Instagram in response to the news that Disney laid off 1,000 employees, including key Marvel creatives.

🔈 Spotify’s Human Verified Badge

3. Last week, I highlighted an effort by the Authors Guild to give writers a way to distinguish their human-written work from AI-generated and AI-assisted books. Now Spotify, heeding the public discourse on AI and some consumer backlash regarding the technology, has rolled out its own human verification program. The new Verified by Spotify badge will help listeners identify which music artists on the platform are AI-generated and which are primarily produced by human musicians.

“We look for an identifiable artist presence both on and off-platform, like concert dates, merch, and linked social accounts on their artist profile,” Spotify’s new guideline states. “At launch, profiles that appear to primarily represent AI-generated or AI-persona artists are not eligible for verification. In today’s music landscape, the concept of artist authenticity is complex and quickly evolving, and we’ll continue to develop our approach over time.” The Verified by Spotify text will be paired with a light-green checkmark and will begin appearing in the next few weeks.

Temporary Measure, or Trend: Spotify’s move to help consumers differentiate between human and AI-generated work is a major shift that could present a headwind for AI companies hoping to spur more adoption of AI tools for entertainment production. If AI-generated content continues to receive fan criticism and eventually becomes genuinely undesirable, many AI startups, like Suno and Udio, could suffer. “Our goal is to make it easier for you to trust and understand the human artistry behind the music you listen to on Spotify,” the company’s statement continues, “and develop long-term, meaningful connections with the artists and music you love.”

🎥 Val Kilmer’s Family Reveals More On AI Actors

4. When the first footage of the AI version of the late Val Kilmer appeared in the trailer for Deeper Than The Grave, reviews were mixed. But most Hollywood insiders opted to skip commenting until they heard from Kilmer’s family on the matter. Well, now that day has come, as Kilmer’s daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, opened up and discussed the decision to allow the AI avatar of her father to be displayed in the film.

“I have gotten some negative comments. It’s kind of fallen into two camps: people that maybe have a more precarious position in the industry are worried and see AI as a threat, which is absolutely valid,” Kilmer said during an appearance on the Today Show. “And then at the same time, I’ve gotten a lot of really good responses from people, older people, people who may be more established in the industry, that see it as a way to protect the actor’s ownership of their IP. We have to contend with this technology one way or the other. Avoiding it is not necessarily the way. It’s much easier to structure the rights if you proactively license it.”

Further explaining the decision to allow the AI Val Kilmer to “act” alongside human actors, Kilmer said, “This project gave us an opportunity to make sure that if someone in the future uses [Val Kilmer’s] likeness unauthorized, we can say, ‘Oh, no, look, this is what you’re supposed to do,’ rather than try to hypothetically prove what it would be.”

So does that mean that we’ll now see an entirely new slate of films starring the AI version of Val Kilmer? “No, because I wouldn’t just put his likeness in something without his permission, necessarily,” said Kilmer. “There’s certain things that he talked about, ways to use it, that we may do eventually.”