Earlier this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger sent an email out to employees saying that the layoff process had begun at The Walt Disney Company. This process would be done in three phases, with the first one happening this week. Names are now starting to trickle out about who is being laid off at The Walt Disney Company, and many of them are fairly recognizable.
This morning The New York Times reported that Isaac Perlmutter, the chairman of Marvel, has been let go. He was instrumental in an unsuccessful attempt to shake up Disney’s board. The layoff was part of a larger cost cutting measure by Disney.
80 years old, Perlmutter was told by phone that Marvel Entertainment would be folded into larger Disney business units. Marvel Entertainment was a small and focused division that created consumer products and was run separately from Marvel Studios. Rob Steffens, co-president of Marvel Entertainment, and John Turitzin, chief counsel for the division were also both laid off. Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Entertainment, will remain and report to Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. Previously, he reported to both Feige and Perlmutter.
Known by most as Ike, Perlmutter was part of a push earlier this year to install activist investor Nelson Peltz on the Disney board. He initially reached out to board members to make this happen. When that didn’t work, Peltz instigated a proxy fight. Mr. Peltz backed off from this in February when Iger announced a restructure of Disney and cost cutting efforts. Since then, The New York Times reported that Perlmutter’s future with the company was the topic of much discover.
Isaac Perlmutter had probably stayed with Disney longer than financially made sense in general. Part of this was due to the fact that he was the one who sold Marvel to Disney in 2009 for $4 billion. He had gained control of the company in the late 1990s. He expanded the company through merchandising characters like X-Men and Spider-Man to movie studios. After the sale to Disney, he initially retained plenty of control. However, this changed as time moved on and his culture and values clashed with those of Disney leadership. In 2015 he lost control of the movies after a feud with Kevin Feige over the budget of Doctor Strange. Perlmutter wanted Feige dismissed. This didn’t happen. Four years later, he also lost control of Marvel television in 2019.
Marvel Entertainment continued to be based in New York City and from there, Perlmutter oversaw comics publishing, Marvel game licensing, certain consumer products and superhero arena shows. He was known for being frugal and his distaste over losing control of Marvel movies was well known. It is perhaps this frugality and pushing for changes at The Walt Disney Company that led to his ultimate downfall.
Perlmutter still remains a large shareholder of The Walt Disney Company. Disney is currently undergoing a process of eliminating 7,000 jobs as a part of $5.5 billion in cuts for the company. This amounts to about 4% of Disney’s employees. This wave of layoffs was the first of three rounds, the largest coming next week. Disney also eliminated its metaverse unit, which was comprised of about 50 people this week. Mike White, who led the division is still with the company. Other executives at Disney have not been so lucky.
On Monday Jayne Bieber, senior vp production at Freeform/Onyx Collective; Mark Levenstein, head of production and postproduction at Hulu; and Elizabeth Newman, head of Disney’s acquisitions department were all let go. Reportedly, the entire acquisitions team was dissolved as well. Jeffrey Epstein, vp of corporate communications was also notified that he would be departing Disney this week as well.
In the coming weeks more layoffs will be coming to Disney. In the initial email from Bob Iger, it was said that the layoffs should be finished before summer. Daps Magic will continue to follow this story and provide updates as they become available and are relevant. Our heartfelt thoughts go out to all of those who are impacted by these waves of job losses. This is never an easy time for anyone and families and lives will be thrown into chaos. Join us in wishing them well.
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