The once-mighty Pixar is laying off 14 percent of its workforce as the Walt Disney Company continues to make brutal budget cuts across its many businesses.
Pixar Animation Studios is slashing about 175 jobs, or 14 percent of its staff, due in large part to Disney+ reducing the number of series it is putting out, according to a Deadline report. Earlier estimates had put the layoffs closer to 20 percent of staff.
The cuts come after Pixar laid off 75 jobs earlier this year, including two executives behind the box-office flop Lightyear.
CEO Bob Iger recently acknowledged Disney massively overspent on streaming content in an attempt to draw more subscribers to Disney+ and its other services, causing the company to lose billions of dollars.
“As we got into the streaming business in a very, very aggressive way, we tried to tell too many stories,” Iger said on a recent earnings call. “Basically, we invested too much, way ahead of possible returns. It’s what led to streaming ending up as a $4 billion loss.”
“We tried to tell too many stories,” he added.
Disney recently laid off a stunning 7,000 workers globally, or more than 3 percent of its total head count. Iger said earlier this year that more budget cuts were in the works as the company tries to pull itself out of its recent financial difficulties.
Like the rest of Disney, Pixar has embraced woke content, putting out titles like Lightyear and Elemental, which both bombed at the box office.
Elemental featured a gender “non-binary” character who uses “they/them” pronouns — a fact that Disney kept hidden from the public in the lead-up to the movie’s release.
Elemental (Disney/Pixar)
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