Disney Just Cut Hundreds of Jobs for the Third Time This Year — and the Leaked AI Memo Suggests It's Not Over
- Disney began laying off roughly 300 employees on Tuesday, September 29 — its third round of cuts since Josh D'Amaro took over as CEO in March.
- The reductions hit tech and HR departments hardest, while the TV and film studios were largely spared.
- A September 18 internal memo warned legal-division staff of "hard choices" and a plan to automate workflows "by leveraging the latest technologies."
- Disney previously cut about 1,000 jobs in April and several hundred more in July, after offering early-retirement packages in August.
- Executives say cost-cutting will continue into next year; Disney employed roughly 231,000 people at the end of fiscal 2025.
The Mouse House is swinging the axe again.
Disney began laying off roughly 300 employees on Tuesday, September 29, in what is now the third wave of job cuts since Josh D'Amaro stepped into the CEO's office back in March. The news broke through entertainment trade outlet Deadline and was quickly confirmed by Variety, the New York Post, and others.
If you're keeping count at home, this is becoming a pattern — and not the kind workers want to see.
Round Three: What Just Happened
This round is smaller than the two that came before it, but it's no less unsettling for the people caught in it. The cuts landed primarily in human resources and technology — the back-office engine rooms that keep a 231,000-person company running.
Two details matter here. First, Disney's television and motion picture divisions were largely spared this time around, according to the reporting. Your favorite shows and movies weren't the target; the corporate scaffolding was.
Second, the cuts come just weeks after company leadership started warning — in writing — that more "hard choices" were coming. We'll get to that memo in a moment, because it's the part that has people genuinely rattled.
The Memo That Has Everyone Talking
Twelve days before this round of layoffs, Disney's chief legal and global affairs officer, Horacio Gutierrez, sent a memo to his own division that read less like a routine update and more like a weather alert.
He warned of "hard choices" about "staffing investments" and described a future with a much smaller legal organization — one built by "automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies."
Read that again: automating workflows. Leveraging the latest technologies. Nobody needs a decoder ring for what that means.
Here's the twist that keeps the story alive: Deadline reports that this week's cuts are not connected to Gutierrez's legal division. Which means the memo is describing a separate round of reductions still to come — and that more layoffs are likely on the way.
How We Got Here: April, July, and a New Playbook
To understand this week's cuts, you have to rewind. D'Amaro took over as CEO in March 2026, and he hasn't wasted much time reshaping the company in his image.
April brought the first wave: roughly 1,000 jobs eliminated as Disney consolidated its marketing operations. About 8% of Marvel Entertainment's workforce was caught in that one, too.
July brought round two: several hundred more positions gone across corporate functions, ESPN, the studios, and Disney Entertainment Television. Pixar and National Geographic took the hardest hits.
August offered a softer exit ramp — voluntary early-retirement packages for directors aged 50 and up with at least a decade at the company. But the company's chief people officer, Sonia Coleman, was blunt that same month: involuntary reductions would continue into next year.
And in their August letter to shareholders, D'Amaro and CFO Hugh Johnston put it in corporate plain-speak: Disney would "remain highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise," evaluating "reductions in labor and SG&A" — sales, general, and administrative expenses. They described the company as "mid-stream in this work."
Mid-stream. As in: not done.
What Comes Next — and What It Means for Disney Workers
D'Amaro has been consistent about his vision. He wants Disney to become, in his words, "a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow's needs." Translation: fewer people, more automation, and a company built for whatever comes next.
For the roughly 172,000 Disney employees in the United States, the message is getting hard to miss. The layoffs aren't one bad quarter's accident anymore — they're the strategy. Three rounds in six months, an early-retirement program, a leaked memo about automation, and executives openly telling shareholders that labor costs are still on the chopping block.
The question isn't whether more cuts are coming. It's where they land next — and whether the people who build the magic are going to be part of the new Disney, or automated out of it.