🎧 Disney’s Endless Layoffs: What’s D’Amaro’s Plan?

Last month, when asked about Disney’s seemingly endless rounds of layoffs, Dana Walden called it an “exaggeration” to suggest the company was cutting jobs every six months.

Technically, she’s right. It’s happening a lot more often than that.

Disney has already gone through five rounds of layoffs this year. And now an even bigger bloodletting may be coming, with some departments reportedly being asked to cut costs by as much as 20 percent — even as the company’s financial results look pretty good.

So what exactly is new CEO Josh D’Amaro’s plan? And who survives it?

Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey examine the disconnect between good numbers and tough announcements, and unpack the strategy behind Disney’s latest cuts, the potential shakeup of its sprawling TV empire and D’Amaro’s aggressive bet on AI. (Elaine was at Disney this week, where every single company in its latest accelerator class was AI-focused.)

They also examine the ambitious “One Disney” plan to bring D’Amaro’s three pillars — streaming, movies, theme parks — into a single ecosystem, and what that means for the executives, divisions and thousands of employees potentially caught in the middle.