EXCLUSIVE: Disney has initiated layoffs as it continues to tighten its belt under recently appointed CEO Josh D’Amaro. Today’s cuts are said to impact a couple of hundred employees, largely in areas such as tech and HR, which is a smaller number than the two previous rounds of layoffs earlier this year.
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Beyond shared functions like tech and HR, the company’s TV division, Disney Entertainment Television, which is expected to undergo a major restructuring under new head Debra OConnell, is not affected by the current staff reductions, sources tell Deadline. The same applies to the motion picture studio, which also is said to be primarily exempt from the new cuts.
For context, Disney had 231,000 employees as of the end of fiscal 2025, 172,000 in the U.S. and 59,000 elsewhere. Largely due to the company’s theme parks and resorts businesses, 16% of workers are part-time and another 8% are seasonal employees.
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The cuts follow Disney’s voluntary early retirement offer to employees at or above the director level who are 50 years old or older and have been at the company for at least 10 years. The process, which typically is a precursor to involuntary staff reductions, just concluded with the cooling-off period for those who had opted in ending this past weekend, sources said.
Talk about layoffs has percolated internally since a September 18 memo by Chief Legal and Global Affairs Officer Horacio Gutierrez. In an email to LGA employees obtained by Deadline, he warned of “hard choices” about “staffing investments” and the division becoming “a much smaller organization.” He went on to describe a “transformation process” that includes “automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies.”
Partly because of the notion that artificial intelligence was likely to contribute to downsizing, the memo ended up being widely shared across the company. Unspecified job cuts within the LGA department, which has a bit less than 1,000 members globally, are not connected to the latest round of layoffs, though entertainment workers across the board are on edge given the headwinds of Big Tech competition and the rise of AI.
D’Amaro has overseen multiple rounds of layoffs since the company veteran succeeded Bob Iger as CEO last March. His first came last April, when 1,000 positions were cut, and several hundred more followed in July, mostly at Pixar and National Geographic.
In their August 5 letter to shareholders, D’Amaro and Disney CFO Hugh Johnston noted that “we remain highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise to create incremental capacity to invest for growth and are evaluating a variety of levers, including reductions in labor and SG&A [Selling, General & Administrative expenses],” adding, “We are mid-stream in this work and will provide future updates on our progress.”
While the layoffs are another jolt to Hollywood, they are a fraction of the size of the Disney cuts overseen by Iger soon after he rejoined the company in 2022. Between 2023 and 2025, some 8,000 workers were let go, helping the company achieve cost savings of $7.5 billion. The savings figure came in far higher than Disney’s initial forecasts.
Half will be back as implants. Hidden headcount with no benefits or job security. Speaking from experience as I am one.
With the addition of ads Disney drew in approximately $12+ billion dollars in Net profit last year. The streamlining excuse is strictly profit driven and not out of ordinary necessity. Last year they made @ $35+ billion which according to AI they used for expense and interest on their debt. For the stockholder AI says earnings will generate about $15 per ten shares. Keeping my money in high interest saving.
Sad as more creatives lose their jobs. Hard to keep losing good people.
It’s all about generating more profit. I believe that on opening day at Disnet world tickets were about 50cents.
Disney’s stock has been stagnant for years and if you adjust for inflation, it’s down. The only thing that has caused it to rise since iger took over was acquiring other companies like Pixar, Marvel, and Fox and absorbing their value. But that only lasts so long when the rest of Disney’s business strategy (which is weak, really weak) isn’t and hasn’t propped up the company, so Josh is doing the only thing they teach in business 101 to raise the stock price: laying people off. Although to be fair, a lot of those folks needed to go anyway.
“Best Box Office in years! Setting records!”
Annnnnd Disney, WB, Paramount all fire thousands of people in response to the great news.