ANALYSIS | GLOBAL STREAMING & STUDIOS
Some managers told to find 20% in annual savings in the fifth round of layoffs under Josh D’Amaro, in a year streaming profit has doubled
IN BRIEF Disney is readying thousands more job cuts, with some managers told to find 20% in annual savings, even as streaming profit doubled. Savings go to content, tech and parks. As Disney+ triples local output, Korean partners face a thinner U.S. head office and bigger local budgets.
The Walt Disney Company is moving toward thousands more job cuts across its TV networks, film studio and theme parks, with some managers told to find as much as 20% in annual savings, Bloomberg reported on Monday; Deadline followed the same day. It would be the fifth round of layoffs since Josh D’Amaro became chief executive in March, and possibly the largest since Disney cut about 7,000 jobs in 2023. The timing is unclear, and Disney declined to comment.
The rationale is reinvestment. D’Amaro plans to put part of the savings into film and TV programming, technology, and the parks and cruise businesses The cuts come in a strong year: fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 7% to $25.2 billion, segment operating income climbed 21% to $5.56 billion, and streaming operating income more than doubled to $712 million, a 13% margin. On the August call D’Amaro said efficiency “frees up capital to reinvest aggressively.”
Disney cut about 1,000 roles in marketing in April, several hundred at Pixar and National Geographic in July, roughly 300 in HR and technology in September and 159 at Imagineering in October, and offered <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/08/disney-voluntary-early-retirement-packages-layoffs-1237048503/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>early retirement to long-serving executives in August. Skydance, the newly merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, is targeting more than $6 billion in annual savings over three years. “Technology set their sights on our business,” Disney president Dana Walden said in October.
While the U.S. head office cuts costs, Disney+ is expanding global investment. It is tripling local-language output worldwide, with Korea at the center through the record-setting Battle of Fates and “currents” co-productions with broadcasters such as MBC (Variety). A leaner U.S. head office and bigger Korean commissions are likely to widen the role of local producers and broadcasters somewhat. Whether Disney can loosen Netflix’s dominance of the Korean streaming market is also being watched. Disney’s full-year results on November 17 are expected to put the first numbers on the savings and where they go.
The Walt Disney Studios entrance sign in Burbank, California. Disney is preparing thousands more job cuts across its TV networks, film studio and parks. Photo: Disney video still
Disney’s layoffs since D’Amaro became CEO.omberg
Disney+ triples local output; in Korea, co-productions with broadcasters grow
Jon Wax, executive vice president of international original television at Disney Entertainment, told the Busan International Film Festival in October that Disney+ is tripling its local-language output worldwide. Korean shows must first succeed at home, he said: “If it doesn’t work locally… it won’t work globally” (Variety, October 7).
Wax said the unscripted series Battle of Fates (운명전쟁49), in which shamans, tarot readers, face readers and saju practitioners compete, was the biggest series premiere ever on Disney+ in Korea, spawned a spinoff, House of Fates, and now has local versions in preparation. Citing Perfect Crown (21세기 대군부인), made with broadcaster MBC, and The Remarried Empress (재혼 황후), he said romance travels well. Disney calls its window-sharing co-productions with local broadcasters “currents,” and Wax said he hoped more such partnerships would lift the whole local industry.
Media Partners Asia ranks Disney+ as the third-largest streaming service in Asia outside India and China and projected 19 million subscribers and $1.4 billion in revenue for the region at the end of 2025 (BusinessWorld). Disney+ launched in Korea on November 12, 2021, and turns five next week.
TV networks, film studio and parks in scope, with cuts varying by unit
The new round will reach multiple divisions, including the TV networks and the motion picture studio, at varying amounts, Deadline reported. As is customary before reductions, managers of affected teams have been given targets, some as high as 20% in annual savings. Bloomberg said the savings could come from job eliminations as well as expense cuts, and that the parks, TV channels and the film studio would be disproportionately affected.
The Mickey Ave signpost on the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, with markers named for production crafts such as animation, multiplane and ink & paint. The film studio is among the units facing new cost targets. Photo: Disney video still
Disney employed just over 230,000 people worldwide at the end of fiscal 2025, so April’s 1,000 cuts were about 0.4% of staff. A round described as “thousands” would likely be the largest since 2023, when Iger announced about 7,000 job cuts and $5.5 billion in savings. Employees also expect a significant restructuring of the TV division early next year that could mean hundreds more layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reported, as cited by blooloop.
Disney filed a California WARN notice on October 27 for 159 permanent layoffs at the Glendale campus that houses Imagineering, effective December 29. The parks group is running more projects than at any point in its history; trade outlets attributed the cuts to shifting project priorities.
Early-retirement uptake beat expectations; involuntary cuts to run into next year
The early-retirement offer, announced in an August 24 memo from Senior EVP and Chief People Officer Sonia Coleman, covered U.S.-based directors through EVPs at Disney Entertainment, ESPN and corporate who were at least 50, had ten years of service and reached 65 combined points. The window has closed, and more eligible managers took the package than anticipated, Deadline said.
Coleman wrote at the time that the offer was one of several steps to reshape the company, alongside involuntary reductions that had already begun and “will continue into next year.” Fox Business reported that the program ran separately from Disney’s standard reduction-in-force process, which would resume on its own timeline once the offer closed. Deadline noted the package had always been seen as a precursor to layoffs.
13% streaming margin, $3 billion from parks: the money follows the profit
Experiences, the parks and cruises segment, lifted operating income 20% to $3.02 billion, about four points of which came from a $100 million tariff refund. Entertainment, which houses streaming, studios and TV, rose 64% to $1.68 billion. Sports, squeezed by rights costs, fell 17% to $858 million (ValueTheMarkets, Benzinga).
Disney segment operating income, fiscal Q3. Experiences growth includes a $100 million tariff refund
Disney guided fourth-quarter segment operating income to about $4.9 billion, including a 53rd week, and kept its targets of roughly 12% adjusted EPS growth for fiscal 2026 and double-digit growth in 2027. The reinvestment areas the press has highlighted line up exactly with the businesses whose profits are rising, a sign Disney intends to concentrate on its most profitable lines.
Disney is also strengthening its entertainment technology organization. It named Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer this year, putting enterprise technology, data and AI platforms, product and engineering under one executive.
Dana Walden, Disney’s president and chief creative officer, called the cuts extremely painful at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference on October 1, saying she had parted with colleagues of many years. “Technology set their sights on our business,” she said, adding that the industry’s restructuring would not stop (TheWrap).
Skydance targets $6 billion a year; Disney does it without a merger
Layoffs are not Disney’s problem alone. At Skydance, the company formed from Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz told staff in a memo after the deal closed that layoffs were coming. Executives are targeting more than $6 billion in annualized savings over three years, and a Los Angeles County report estimated the merger could cost about 4,500 film and TV jobs in the city over that period (Variety).
Cost-saving targets at U.S. media companies
Without a major merger, Disney is concentrating on restructuring costs. Lacking merger savings from overlapping departments, it is stacking unit-level savings: the marketing consolidation in April, HR and technology in September, park project priorities in October and cost targets for TV and the studio now.
A thinner head office means more work for Korean partners
April’s cuts fell on the combined marketing organization, September’s on HR and technology support, and the current round on TV network and studio overhead. As noted above, Disney+ is tripling local-language output. With commissioning budgets rising and U.S. publicity, marketing and administrative staff shrinking, Korean producers may be asked to take on more of the local publicity, launch marketing and audience-data work alongside delivering the shows.
The currents co-production model also stands out. It lets a broadcaster fund part of a production through Disney+ while keeping its own schedule. MBC’s work with Disney+ on Perfect Crown is one example of Korean broadcaster collaboration. Korean broadcasters’ TV advertising has been slow to recover: Daishin Securities in May cut its 2026 earnings-per-share forecast for CJ ENM by 12% to reflect the delay (StockHub summary). Disney’s shift of money from TV networks to streaming and technology in the U.S. mirrors the cost problem facing Korean broadcasters whose ad revenue is shrinking.
With cost targets now reaching the TV networks and studio, the U.S. head office may also apply tighter profitability tests when greenlighting projects. Because currents deals cover the broadcaster’s schedule, the Disney+ release window and the split of overseas rights together, a Korean partner’s leverage will depend on how well it can show domestic performance first, which is the test Wax set out.
Outlook: full-year results on November 17
Disney reports fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results before the market opens on November 17. The first question is whether it will put numbers on the size of the cuts, the total savings and how they will be reinvested. Fiscal 2025 revenue was $94.4 billion. The results should also show whether the 20% targets spread across the company or stay with the TV, studio and parks units.
California requires WARN notices 60 days before mass layoffs, so any further filings this year will show headcounts by site. The TV restructuring reported by the Wall Street Journal could follow early next year. With Disney promising double-digit earnings growth in fiscal 2027 while raising spending on content and technology, layoffs look set to become a recurring way of reallocating costs rather than a one-off clean-up.
In Korea, the test is whether Disney+’s plan to triple local-language output turns into actual commissions and broadcaster co-production deals. As the head office slims down, Korean producers and broadcasters are likely to need to bring evidence of domestic performance and their own marketing capacity to the table from the development stage.
