The Walt Disney Company has reportedly laid off hundreds of employees in its film and television divisions.
A new report from Deadline claims The Walt Disney Company has laid off “several hundred employees” from marketing divisions in both film and television. Other divisions affected include publicity, casting, and development as well as Disney’s corporate finances. Many of the employees in the film and TV departments are said to be based in Los Angeles.
Some of the employees are executives including Eric Souliere, who was the VP of Casting at 20th Television and Tony Tompson, the VP of Content Development at Hulu Originals.
Not only are employees being laid off, but some seemed to have seen the blood in the water and preemptively left. Deadline reports that Dylann Brander Gunning, the SVP of Casting and Crystal Holt, the VP Series for 20th Television have also left. Joining them in exiting is VP of Drama Development at ABC Hulu Collin Sapera. Ashley Chang, who was the VP Content Development at Hulu also left to join Amazon MGM Studios.
The layoffs are not all that surprising given there have been numerous signs that Disney is not only tightening the belt, but attempting to cut back on its gargantuan costs.
At the end of last year, Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman explained why the company did not renew The Acolyte, “So as it relates to Acolyte, we were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two. So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.”
In March, Jeremy Renner revealed that Disney only offered him half his salary for a second season of Hawkeye.
He said, “They asked me to do a season 2 and they offered me half the money. And I’m like, ‘Wow!’ It’s going to take me twice the amount of work for half the amount of money. And so eight months of my time essentially. And I have to do it for half. I’m like, ‘I’m sorry. Why because you think I’m only half the Jeremy because I got ran over? Maybe that’s why you want to pay me half of what I made on the first season?’”
“And this is not Marvel. This is just like Disney. Not even really Disney,” Renner said. “It’s just the penny pinchers. The accountants. I told them to go fly a kite. I mean just at the insult offer. So we didn’t see eye to eye on that.”
“And sadly, I still love the character,” he continued. “I’d still love to do it, but I had to defend myself. I didn’t ask for any more money, mind you. Just pay me what I made the first season. So it’s a little disheartening that that didn’t happen. But that’s fine. I’m happy to let that go because my body’s probably thanking me time and time again that I’m not doing it right now. But we’ll see.”
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Even more recently, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy implied the company had run out of cash and company executives had informed him that “streaming is dead.”
During an appearance at the ATX Television festival, Gilroy said, “I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million. For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘F**k the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’ … In Season 2, they said, ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,’ so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up. That [freedom] comes with responsibilities.”
The company’s movie business has also struggled mightily over the last few years despite one-off hits like the live-action Lilo & Stitch. Marvel Studios’ recent Thunderbolts film is currently around a $100 million in the red.
In October 2024, Caroline Reid at Forbes noted that Disney had lost nearly $300 million on both The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania.
It’s unclear how much money Lucasfilm has spent given they haven’t even made a film since The Rise of Skywalker released in 2019 despite announcing at least half a dozen projects that are in various stages of development. However, Reid reported that the the company’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny lost $130 million back in March 2024.
Despite these massive losses and now the ensuing layoffs it’s unclear if The Walt Disney Company has actually learned anything given the studio is still greenlighting blatantly woke projects like a sex-swapped Holes television show for Disney+.
What do you make of these layoffs?
Good. Failure is all they deserve. Unfortunately the management is still there.
Let the bloodbath begin!
Without our tax dollars funding their degeneracy...
I look forward to this company being stripped apart by the government and sold off to someone who cares for children.