Disney is a gigantic company spanning everything from movies and television to theme parks and merchandise, but yesterday, it got smaller. In a large round of layoffs, over 1,000 jobs were cut to “streamline” operations. This comes soon after a transition of power from outgoing CEO Bob Iger to new CEO Josh D’Amaro, who previously handled Disney’s Parks division.
While these layoffs were spread out across the entire company, one particular department was hit hard, a bad sign for the entertainment industry’s underappreciated world of physical media.
According to The Wrap, Disney’s home entertainment team, which is responsible for physical media like Blu-rays, has been wiped out. While Disney had historically been faithful about releasing physical copies of its projects, they’d become increasingly rare in recent years, especially for its streaming originals. At a time when TV shows — including shows previously available on Disney+ — can be erased from streaming with little warning, physical media is more important than ever to fans. Disney’s physical releases could still be outsourced, but this move certainly suggests that the company’s priorities lie elsewhere.
New Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro has laid off over 1,000 employees.
Aurore Marechal/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
This is a particularly bad development for Marvel fans. Not only has owning copies of future Marvel projects likely become more difficult, but many Marvel Studios staffers were also laid off. Deadline claims there were significant cuts to visual development, with Disney only keeping “a small team to oversee the hiring of artists on a project-by-project basis who will be outside contractors going forward.” The huge cost of making MCU blockbusters may finally be catching up with the studio.
It’s too early to tell how these layoffs will affect Disney’s direction, but it is worth noting one phrase in D’Amaro’s memo to employees. “Given the fast-moving pace of our industries,” the memo reads, “this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs.”
Physical media may not be “technologically-enabled” in a streaming world, but it’s far more reliable for consumers than a digital license that could be revoked at any time. If a company as large as Disney is no longer invested in selling physical media to fans, how well is the rest of the medium going to fare?