[BIZPACREVIEW] According to a source inside Disney, the entertainment giant has ordered managers/executives to prepare budget cuts and, more notably, lists of employees to be laid off, with the expectation being that firings will begin in April.This news, broken by Business Insider, comes weeks after CEO Bob Iger announced during the company’s February earnings call that he’d like to cut at least 7,000 jobs (only 4,000 of them are already filled) to reduce expenses.
"Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger said Wednesday that the Burbank company will shed 7,000 jobs in an effort to save $5.5 billion in costs, marking some of the steepest reductions in the company’s history and the latest sign of Hollywood’s retrenchment," the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
"The belt-tightening underscores the extraordinary difficulties Disney and other media giants face as they reckon with the realities of streaming economics — which have proved more vexing than many anticipated — and the challenges facing Iger, who took over from ousted CEO Bob Chapek in November."
At the time of the announcement, the company’s many critics accused it of having fallen into the "go woke, go broke" paradigm.