Disney began laying off 1,000 employees on Tuesday morning, cutting across publicity, Marvel and marketing teams as the company moved deeper into a restructuring that has touched several of its biggest consumer-facing divisions.
Twenty people in Disney’s publicity departments were let go, the entire home entertainment team was eliminated and the EPK team was also wiped out. Chris Bess, who led home entertainment as executive director of global publicity and marketing communications, was among those cut, along with Natalie Clunis, director of creative content on the EPK team. Positions were eliminated at every level on the digital marketing side, including Dustin Sandoval, who was removed as senior vice president of global digital marketing, and Mike Reeder, who was let go as director of digital marketing. Steve Nuchols was cut from creative advertising, and Theresa Helmer was eliminated as vice president of brand digital marketing.
Marvel employees in Burbank and New York were also affected, with cuts reaching staff across film and television production, comics, franchise, finance and legal. Disney said the number of impacted Marvel employees was much smaller than an 8% report, and said those reductions stemmed from a smaller film and television production slate and from efficiencies gained after Marvel Entertainment was folded into Marvel Studios. The layoffs also followed Disney’s January announcement of a unified enterprise marketing and brand organization.
In a statement, Josh D’Amaro said Disney had spent the past several months looking for ways to streamline operations in different parts of the company. “In January, we announced our unified enterprise marketing and brand organization, designed to serve consumers in an even more connected way,” he said. “Over the past several months, we have looked at ways in which we can streamline our operations in various parts of the company to ensure we deliver the world-class creativity and innovation our fans value and expect from Disney.”
He added that the company has been working to build a more agile workforce as the industry changes quickly. “Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs,” D’Amaro said. “As a result, we will be eliminating roles in some parts of the company and have begun notifying impacted employees.” The cuts, which began Tuesday, show that Disney is no longer treating the reorganization as a theoretical efficiency exercise; it is turning that plan into job losses across marketing and Marvel, with more employees already being told their roles are gone.
