
Just because the movies seem to be working this summer and the flood of deals at Cannes indicated that the appetite has returned to the acquisitions business, that doesn’t mean studios are immune to layoffs. Fox has become the fourth studio this week to lop staff. The studio has laid off 12 in home entertainment and 10 in IT. It’s described as a minor realignment that occurred mostly in the analytics group for Fox Home Entertainment and the IT group that supports them. Earlier this week, Paramount shuttered its worldwide acquisitions group under Matt Brodlie. Disney next week will lay off about 5% largely in the distribution area and a few other spots, while Lionsgate laid off less than 20 people as part of a reorganization affecting home entertainment and service areas.


Victim of merger here….overworked now, doing the job of three people. My sympathy goes out to the laid-off workers and those who have to pick up the pieces after them…working in the non-glamourous part of this business can really suck.
Yip, add them to the list…
For all you out there who say making Hollywood all political in its content wouldn’t hurt anything. Tell that to all those who’ve now lost their jobs.
Political Hollywood junk does only thing well, not…make…money. The DVD, home market especially. Bad movies may get a few in the theater, but not in the home market… Losses have really grown the last five years, Hollywood really turned political the last… oh really… five years. What an amazing coincidence.
So profits have fallen, people are now becoming more unemployed and you will hear a lot of stupid spin on how “social justice,” is progressing in Hollywood film form and you should get in line.
Well sorry, I’m not a fan of job losses. You can take you “social,” whatever and bestow it. I wish it was all these Hollywood studio heads that turned Hollywood so political that should be losing their jobs, not the rank and file.
“Hollywood has turned more political in the last five years”. You obviously know nothing about Hollywood’s history. This town is less political than it has ever been, barring the forties and fifties. You’re attributing job losses in the industry to a general “political” tone in Hollywood product is laughable.
Right-wingers are really reaching to make *anything* “political” so they can blame the Left. Some mornings I wonder if Deadline has turned into a conservative blog while I slept, there are so many wingnut, anti-Hollywood screeds on here.
Please, “less political.” Rendition, Lions for Lambs, State of Play, Redacted, Green Zone, The Conspirator, Fair Game, Machete, The Hurt Locker, Body of Lies, Stop Loss, Brothers…
The list goes on… and oh yeah, none of these made any money on DVD, in fact, they all lost money on DVD/home market.
You want me to seriously believe that if any, heck, even two of these stupid financial pits made even a cent that people would be getting laid off across the entire industry today.
I know, I know, hard to fathom… so let me put it this way.. “No money made means no jobs created, only lost.” Do I need to repeat this????
It would apperar fox is saturating the market and innocent people are being affected. Perhaps they could concentrate on quality instead of quantity in order to improve their bottom line?
Were these layoffs really necessary? Only 22 people? Seriously, how much could the loss of these 22 people’s salaries really contribute to improving the bottom line?
ridunculous — depends on what their man month cost is per employee. if it’s on average $10,000 — laying off 22 people saves the company over $2.6 million a year. seems to be a lot to me.
You have a good point, but using those numbers, the company could also cut back in senior executive bonuses and easily save more than that.
However, people aren’t buying DVDs anymore, so eventually all the studios will shut down their home entertainment divisions and have everything handled by the theatrical or digital groups.
Maybe these companies should cut back on the bigwig bonuses and the all the comps to management to save the jobs of these people !
yes, it’s a bad day when people doing their jobs get laid off. but read the papers — consumers in the flyover states have stopped buying dvd’s.
so what should any or all of these companies do? cut overhead. period.
if you don’t like that outcome, take your savings out of the bank and buy stock in these companies and once you get control you can make the decisions.
once it’s your money at stake, you might be more concerned with the value of the stock than whether people keep their jobs despite the work going away.
An excellent point… While people above like “go back to sleep,” and “sick of conservatives,” are trying to overlook the obvious, the matter is what it is.
Flyover states, rural states, and even suburbs in outlining cities are all sick of political Hollywood junk. Not just because it doesn’t fit their politics but because they’re “boring,” even to watch. So they’ve stopped buying DVD’s.
Regarding all the studios, stop stalling series that can make you money on and continue finishing up what you guys started in the first place. Stop releasing shows that don’t sell and focus on those that do. Again, this goes for all the major studios and maybe this can signal a wake-up call for them.