A Marvel Studios exec says she wants to see more diversity in upcoming Marvel movies.
This is a conversation that fans and the media have been discussing for quite some time now, and it looks like the topic is being shared even within Disney’s doors.
Victoria Alonso is the executive vice president of production at Marvel Studios. That means she is only a few heads below head honcho Kevin Feige himself.
Alonso is an important voice in Hollywood for Latin and female representation. She was one of the Hollywood Reporter’s 2017 Women in Entertainment Power 100 and was the 2015 honoree for the Muse Award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement from the New York Women in Film & Television.
These are only a few of the awards and accolades she has gained for her lifetime of production work on films like Shrek, Iron Man, Big Fish, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But as Victoria Alonso works on the finishing touches of the upcoming Avengers 4 and Captain Marvel films, she can’t help but feel that something’s wrong.
While speaking to BBC World News’ Talking Movies about diversity in film making, Alonso spoke on the franchise's need to represent everyone in the audience.
“You don’t get to have this kind of success if the entire world doesn’t see your product, so we are determined to have every one of those people represented in our films in some way. At some point in time. Now, we only make two or three movies a year, so it’s difficult to have every single one. But it is definitely one of the things that we have in our minds all the time.”
Alonso also says that Marvel Studios still has work to do in terms of representing Latin, Gay, and Asian people.
“I think we haven’t represented the Latin community in general. I think that’s something that we have to do better. The gay community has not been represented whatsoever. I’m gay, so I can tell you that I long for that. I think we haven’t represented the Asian community well. I think we’ve had some representation, but it’s minimum. And, we would like to represent that in a big way.”
But as Hollywood looks more and more into making money from the Global Box office, that pull for representation becomes tricky.
Certainly, having Asian and Latin characters and heroes can only bolster interest and ticket sales abroad (especially in the box office juggernauts of China, South Korea, and Japan), but LGBTQ representation isn’t as easy.
With China taking every step to ban, block, and water-down LGBTQ content in film or online, the inclusion of LGBTQ characters can only be a complication for movie studios looking to make money in the country.
While Marvel Studios may have the desire to truly represent everyone, and certainly receives calls for it from both outside and inside the office, will the financial side of things allow that to happen anytime soon?
We’ll see in time.
To watch Victoria Alonso’s full conversation with BBC World News’ Talking Movies¸ click this link here.
h/t: BBC World News
