Disney to Lay Off Nearly 250 Employees

Walt Disney Studio is going into staff-cutting mode and is expected to eliminate between 200 and 250 positions next week.

The layoffs will amount to less than 5% of the company’s total workforce, about 5,000 employees worldwide. The majority of the cuts will be in the areas of distribution, although marketing and production could be affected as well.

Declining revenue from the home entertainment division has been cited as one of the causes (consumers are shifting away from buying movies to renting), as well as piracy.

But organizational changes are also factors, such as combining domestic and international distribution divisions and the growing reliance of Disney on DreamWorks, Marvel and Pixar to fill the movie pipeline.