Walt Disney Company to Lay Off Hundreds of TV and Entertainment Employees

Hundreds of Walt Disney Company employees were hit a blow when they were laid off. Deadline reports the layoffs impacted staff across the entertainment, TV, (specifically film and television as well as television publicity, casting and development) and financial departments. 

No full teams were reportedly eliminated. Most of the staff let go were based in Los Angeles.

Some of the names were released earlier today, including Eric Souliere, VP Casting for 20th Television, who had been working on Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story and 9-1-1 series. The former casting director will be transitioning to casting on the new spinoff, 9-1-1: Nashville.

Tony Tompson, VP Content Development at Hulu Originals, was also said to be one to go. He was with Hulu for more than six years and is already pursuing new opportunities and has been meeting for jobs. 

This is the fourth, and largest, round of layoffs in the past 10 months for Disney staffers as part of a reorganizing plan to focus on streaming to combat economic downturn. Upon Disney’s Bob Iger’s return as CEO, he put forth a goal of at least $7.5 billion in cost reductions at the start of 2023, with about 7,000 jobs eliminated that year. This Spring, just under 200 Disney employees were laid off, representing almost 6% of the workforce in the ABC News Group and Disney’s entertainment networks, including Freeform and FX.

ABC Signature folded into 20th Television, as well as the consolidation of ABC and Hulu Originals scripted drama and comedy teams, resulting in about 30 Disney Entertainment Television layoffs. Last summer, DET underwent a round of staff cuts that impacted roughly 140 people, representing about 2% of the total workforce, 60 of them at National Geographic. The Disney news comes as NBCUniversal made staff cuts as several cable networks transitioned into a new company, Versant.