Disney culls more jobs
Disney is laying off several hundred more employees in its latest round of job cuts, part of chief executive Bob Iger’s push to save $5.5 billion.
Image by Cybernews
Disney is laying off several hundred more employees in its latest round of job cuts, part of chief executive Bob Iger’s push to save $5.5 billion.
- The new layoffs were announced amid Disney's continued cost-saving push.
- The latest cuts are the largest in the past 10 months and reflect the company's shift from traditional television to streaming.
- Disney showed better financial results than expected in the first three months of 2025.
The layoffs will impact staff across Disney’s global film, television, and finance divisions. The entertainment giant confirmed the cuts in a statement to the BBC, describing them as “surgical” and noting that no teams will be eliminated entirely.
Specific areas impacted include marketing, publicity, casting, and development as the company grapples with the decline of traditional television and recalibrates toward streaming.
"As our industry transforms at a rapid pace, we continue to evaluate ways to efficiently manage our businesses while fuelling the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney," a company spokesperson was quoted by the BBC.
Executive roles in the television casting and development were among those affected, according to Deadline, which first reported on the latest layoffs. It said that the cuts in the television and film divisions were similar in size, with the majority of television staffers reportedly based in Los Angeles.
This is Disney's fourth and biggest round of layoffs in the past 10 months. It follows major cuts in 2023, when 7,000 workers were fired after Bob Iger returned as the company’s chief executive and initiated a cost-saving plan to reduce expenses by $5.5 billion.
Disney employs 233,000 workers and owns several other companies, including Marvel and Hulu. The company reported better-than-expected financial results in May, with an overall revenue reaching $23.6 billion in the first quarter of 2025 – a 7% increase from the same period a year before.
Much of that growth was driven by new subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service, which ended free account sharing last year, following in the footsteps of industry leaders like Netflix.
Disney has recently suffered from cyber incidents, including a disgruntled ex-employee who was caught hacking into the company’s restaurant software and removing deadly peanut allergy warnings on certain menu items.
The company also ditched Slack, a workplace messaging platform, after its internal communications were exposed following a breach by a hacktivist group protesting its use of artificial intelligence (AI).