Disney plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs under new CEO Josh D'Amaro

Layoffs expected in coming weeks as D'Amaro reshapes marketing organisation following leadership transition

Share

Briefing

Disney is preparing to eliminate as many as 1,000 positions in the coming weeks, according to the Wall Street Journal. The cuts come under newly installed chief executive Josh D'Amaro and are centred on a marketing overhaul. The scale of the redundancies signals an early structural reset by D'Amaro as he puts his stamp on the company.

Disney Plans Up to 1,000 Job Cuts Under D'Amaro

Disney is planning to lay off as many as 1,000 employees in the coming weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported, in what would be one of the first significant organisational moves by new chief executive Josh D'Amaro.

The reductions are focused on the company's marketing function, according to reporting by the WSJ and subsequently confirmed in outline by the Los Angeles Times. The scope of the cuts suggests a deliberate restructuring rather than routine headcount management.

D'Amaro, who previously ran Disney's parks, experiences and products division, took the chief executive role following Bob Iger's departure. The marketing-focused nature of the layoffs points to D'Amaro consolidating operational control and reducing overhead in functions he may view as duplicative or misaligned with his strategic priorities.

No financial targets or cost-saving figures were included in the sourced reporting. The timing, described as the coming weeks, suggests the process is at an advanced stage of planning.

Why it matters

→Marketing-focused layoffs under a CEO who built his career in parks and experiences signal a structural de-prioritization of centralized brand spend in favor of experiential and direct revenue channels. Agencies and media platforms with high Disney marketing dependency face reduced forward spend. This is consistent with D'Amaro's operational background, where ROI is measured in gate attendance and per-capita spend rather than brand impression metrics.
→D'Amaro's first significant act being a headcount reduction rather than a strategic acquisition or content announcement tells the market his near-term mandate is margin improvement. This reinforces the investment thesis that DIS operating margins will expand before revenue accelerates, which favors the stock on a multiple-expansion basis if streaming profitability continues to hold but creates execution risk if parks demand softens simultaneously.

Connected Events

Earnings · 13 days ago

Delta cuts growth plans as fuel costs rise, expects $300m refinery offset

Delta's capacity cuts and fee increases reflect a parallel pattern: new or newly empowered management teams using cost and overhead actions as the first visible signal of strategic control, before committing to revenue-side moves. In both cases the market is being asked to read cost discipline as a proxy for strategic coherence.

Disney plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs under new CEO Josh D'Amaro

Disney Plans Up to 1,000 Job Cuts Under D'Amaro

Why it matters

Connected Events

Delta cuts growth plans as fuel costs rise, expects $300m refinery offset

Further reading

Related Stories

Amazon commits up to $25bn more to Anthropic in decade-long cloud deal

Apple names John Ternus as CEO, Tim Cook to become executive chairman in September

Polymarket seeks $400M raise at $15B valuation as ICE deepens commitment