Disney officially began laying off around 1,000 employees today and the cuts went far deeper than anyone expected. Whole departments were eliminated, veteran executives with decades at the company lost their jobs overnight, and Marvel, one of the most powerful brands in entertainment, took a serious hit across both coasts. This is the first major round of layoffs under new CEO Josh D’Amaro, who officially took over from Bob Iger on March 18, 2026.
In a memo sent to staff Tuesday morning, D’Amaro said the company needs to become “more agile and technologically-enabled,” and that eliminating certain roles was part of streamlining operations. Cold comfort for the people who got the call today.
Entire publicity and home entertainment teams wiped out
The cuts in Disney’s publicity and marketing divisions were sweeping. Twenty people from the company’s publicity departments were let go, and the entire home entertainment team was eliminated, that includes executive director of global publicity and marketing communications Chris Bess, who led the group. The EPK team was also gone, including director of creative content Natalie Clunis.
On the digital marketing side, it wasn’t just a few positions, cuts happened at every level. Among those out the door is Dustin Sandoval, SVP of Global Digital Marketing and one of the most prominent names on the list. Sandoval is a 16-year veteran of Disney who oversaw the digital campaigns for massive releases like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Avengers: Endgame.” He was also the mind behind one of the more memorable marketing stunts in recent memory, for “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” his team literally sent apes on horses to major American cities. He was recognized as one of the highest-ranking Latino executives in Hollywood. Also gone is Director of Digital Marketing Mike Reeder.
Steve Nuchols, who managed print campaigns for virtually every movie Disney released over the past 25 years, was also let go, as was Theresa Helmer, who handled YouTube and brand campaigns as VP of Brand Digital Marketing. Some corners of the company appear to have been spared, the film publicity department in New York and Pixar were not impacted, but the damage everywhere else is significant.
All of this follows a January restructuring in which Disney consolidated all its marketing under a single enterprise division led by Asad Ayaz, the company’s chief marketing and brand officer. That reorganization, internally known as “Project Imagine,” made a large number of existing roles redundant essentially overnight. When you collapse multiple departments into one unified structure, someone always ends up without a chair.
Marvel gets hit in New York and Burbank
Marvel did not escape the cuts either. Both Marvel Entertainment in New York and Marvel Studios in Burbank were affected, with layoffs spreading across most areas of the division, film and TV production, comics, franchise, finance, legal, and visual development.
The visual development cuts stand out as particularly significant. Marvel Studios is keeping only a small internal team whose job will be to coordinate the hiring of outside artists on a project-by-project basis. That means the in-house visual development team that helped define the look and feel of the MCU for years is largely gone, replaced by a freelance contractor model going forward.
Disney disputed a report that the Marvel cuts represented 8% of the division’s workforce, telling TheWrap the actual number is “much smaller.” But regardless of the exact percentage, the cuts touched nearly every corner of the Marvel operation.
The explanation from sources is straightforward: Marvel’s production slate got too big, too fast. The push to constantly feed Disney+ with fresh Marvel content led to an inflated headcount that wasn’t sustainable long-term. Combine that with the ongoing integration of Marvel Entertainment into Marvel Studios, and the math eventually caught up. Now the studio is scaling back to a more focused slate and adjusting its staffing accordingly.
D’Amaro’s first big call as the new Disney CEO
D’Amaro addressed employees in his memo Tuesday, writing “I know this is hard. Those that will be leaving us have done meaningful work here and care deeply about this company.” He mentioned a “career transition program” for those impacted, though Disney has not shared specific details on what that actually includes.
The 1,000 positions being eliminated represent less than 1% of Disney’s global workforce of approximately 231,000 employees. But the number feels bigger when you see entire specialized teams disappear in a single day. For context, Bob Iger oversaw more than 8,000 layoffs after returning as CEO in 2022. D’Amaro is starting at a fraction of that scale, but the impact on specific divisions is hard to ignore.
There’s also an interesting tension in how Disney is talking about all of this. D’Amaro’s memo points toward a “technologically-enabled workforce” as the goal, but the company’s biggest AI bet just fell apart. Disney pulled out of its high-profile arrangement with OpenAI after Sora was shut down in late March 2026, ending what had been a planned $1 billion investment. At the same time, Walt Disney Imagineering has its own internal AI tool called JARVIS, named after Tony Stark’s AI assistant from Iron Man, which helps Imagineers search through decades of archived materials from the division’s library.
The people losing their jobs today built the campaigns that made audiences line up around the block for Marvel premieres and cry at Pixar trailers. Whether Disney can maintain that creative firepower with a leaner, more contractor-driven structure is something the industry will be watching closely.
What do you think, are these layoffs a smart move to keep Disney competitive, or is the company cutting way too deep? Drop your opinion in the comments, we’d love to read it!