Amid a long summer of cost-cutting and budget-shortening in Hollywood, Disney has made a new round of layoffs within its corporate structure.
“We are continually evaluating ways to invest in our business and manage our resources and costs more effectively to fuel the creativity and cutting-edge innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney,” a company representative said. “As part of this ongoing improvement work, we reviewed the cost structure of our functions company-wide and determined that there are ways to operate more efficiently.”
It’s unclear which company-wide jobs will be most affected by the latest layoffs or whether the review will affect employees in Burbank or those at other locations. A Disney representative did not elaborate on how many employees will be affected or the extent of the round of cost cuts. The most recent company-wide cuts were made earlier this month. Reported by Delivery date.
The Bob Iger-led studio group, like nearly every other Hollywood company this year, has cut staff across multiple divisions. In May, in what was described as the unit’s biggest restructuring, Pixar cut about 14 percent of its workforce, about 175 employees, as part of its transition away from series production at Disney+.
On Disney’s earnings call on August 7, CFO Hugh Johnston indicated that the company’s push to profitability from streaming was a work in progress. “We were losing $1 billion a quarter not that long ago and now we’re making money and our expectation is that we’re going to continue on this journey to make more money to get to the double-digit margins that we’ve talked about and eventually surpass them,” Johnston told analysts when asked about its margins and the anti-password-sharing campaign. (That campaign, the paid sharing program, also officially began on Wednesday.)
Last year, Iger unveiled a plan to cut 7,000 employees as part of a “strategic reorganization” of the company that was implemented in multiple phases with staff reductions over a number of months. As part of its latest annual report, Disney employed 225,000 people across all its divisions, from its film and television studio networks, ESPN’s sports division, its streaming services (Disney+ and Hulu) and its parks and experiences portfolio. Of those, 167,000 are in the United States and 58,000 are based outside the country.
So far, Disney’s stock is up about 3.5% year-to-date, but it’s trading at a level well below where it was in 2021 and 2022.
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