The House of Mouse is on fire, but if you were to ask Mickey, he’s turning the hose on to clean up a bit. Pay no attention to the billowing smoke.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Disney is laying off hundreds of employees, but before you assume it’s because of the corporation’s monumental failures, Disney assures you that it’s just for efficiency:
Walt Disney Co. is laying off several hundred people globally across multiple divisions, including marketing for film and television, TV publicity, casting and development, and corporate financial operations, the entertainment conglomerate said Monday.
No entire teams were cut. Disney said the layoffs are part of an effort to operate more efficiently.
This is what you say when you want to keep headlines contained and investors not to panic, but the reality is that this is the fourth major wave of layoffs in as much as 15 months, the last one being in March where Disney cut 200 employees from various places in the company.
Moreover, these layoffs have been ongoing since 2023, when Disney cut 7,000 jobs under the Bob Iger-led $5.5 billion savings plan.
So Disney may be telling the truth, but not the whole truth. It might be trying to realign itself into being more streamlined, and moving to focusing more on quality than quantity when it comes to their productions. However, I think it’s pretty clear that Disney is hurting.
There’s a long trail of box office bombs behind it, such as 2022’s Lightyear and Strange World which resulted in a combined estimated $300 million in loss, and 2025’s Snow White is estimated to have lost around $115 million.
The 2025 live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch fared much better, bringing in over $600 million on a $100 million budget, but the occasional hit is a band-aid that doesn’t patch the bullet wound or stop the bleeding. Moreover, this is another remake, and relies heavily on nostalgia to draw in audiences. It’s not creating anything new, and is more of a strategy to buy more time than an actual attempt at establishing something that will create real movement for the company.
What’s more, Disney couldn’t stop itself from infecting even that story with a bit of modern wokeness.
Read: Ohana? Disney Couldn’t Help Itself and It Assassinated Another Character in the Name of Modernity
However, Disney does seem to be getting the message, and it increasingly shows. For instance, the planned remake of Tangled has been put on hold indefinitely after Snow White’s disastrous bomb at theaters.
Time will tell, of course. It should also be noted that many major studios are going through layoffs, and are likely preparing for what is the upcoming storm of AI movie creation. Major entertainment corporations likely don’t have long on their throne before they start being challenged by some 16-year-old kid named Kyle who makes blockbuster AI movies between homework and dinner.
Read: Google Releases Mind-Blowing AI Video Technology That Will Both Amaze and Worry You
Disney’s claim that it’s putting down the shotgun in favor of a sniper rifle might be half true, but if we’re being totally honest, it’s hurting. What’s more, it’ll continue hurting if it doesn’t stop aiming down an ideological scope that few people actually care about. Economics might play a part, but the Western world is going through something of a cultural revolution, and Disney’s woke attitudes are out of vogue.
These layoffs will continue if it doesn’t get its act together, and soon the layoffs won’t be ignored by investors through PR reassurances.
The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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