Disney is gearing up for a significant round of layoffs, with some managers told to cut expenses by 20% on an annualized basis, Bloomberg News reported.
It would be the fourth round of job cuts in 2026 under Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro and affect the most number of staffers. The Bloomberg report, which cited anonymous sources, said some Disney operations “will be affected disproportionately,” but it did not provide details on which areas would suffer the brunt of the cutbacks. D’Amaro “aims to reinvest a portion of the savings into film and TV programming, technology and the theme parks and cruise ship businesses,” according to the report.
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Disney has been planning a major restructuring of its TV operations, which would eliminate hundreds of jobs and consolidate divisions, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
In late September, Disney let go a few hundred employees, primarily in its human resources and IT departments across corporate and within different divisions. In July, Disney made job cuts eliminating several hundred jobs across certain corporate functions, including at Pixar, ESPN, Disney Entertainment Television and Disney’s studios. And in April, the Mouse House eliminated about 1,000 roles, primarily as a result of D’Amaro’s formation of a consolidated enterprise marketing division under the leadership of Asad Ayaz, chief marketing and brand officer.
Dana Walden, Disney’s president and chief creative officer, addressed the most recent Disney layoffs at the Bloomberg Screentime event last month. “I think, like all of our similarly situated competitors, and certainly all of our competitors in the tech industry, there is a need to constantly evaluate how you’re structured,” Walden said.
In August, Disney offered early-retirement buyout packages to longtime executives, as part of its ongoing cost-cutting efforts. That offer was available to U.S.-based employees at the director through EVP levels within the Disney Entertainment, ESPN and corporate divisions, with a minimum age of 50 and at least 10 years of service.
About the voluntary buyout offers, Walden said at the Bloomberg conference that the program “was extremely generous and gave a number of our long-tenured executives agency and the opportunity to make their own decisions around whether the timing was right to leave or to stay, knowing that this evolution will never stop, technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive and thrive and grow, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
In announcing results for the June 2026 quarter, D’Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston had indicated that additional job cuts were coming. “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 and administrative expenses],” the execs wrote in the Aug. 5 letter to Disney shareholders.
Disney is scheduled to report results for the September quarter, the company’s Q4 of fiscal 2026, on Nov. 17 before the market opens.
Other media companies are making job cuts, too. Netflix last month axed about 1,000 workers, and Skydance — the company formed via the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery — is expected to make significant layoffs by the end of the year.
Fox Style News Syndicate. Sourced from broadcast reporting: Read Full Source Coverage.