A thousand jobs sounds like a lot. At Disney, it's less than half of 1% of the company. The cuts are targeted, not panicked - and they were already in motion before the new CEO even started.
New CEO Josh D'Amaro didn't order these cuts. They were planned under a cost-reduction initiative with the code name "Project Imagine" before he took office in March.
D'Amaro's move was hiring Asad Ayaz as chief marketing officer with a clear mandate: unite Disney's fragmented marketing departments. If you've ever worked at a large company, you know what "unite the departments" means.
Different groups running separate campaigns, separate budgets, separate strategies. Ayaz's job is to merge them - which inevitably means cutting duplicate roles.
Disney employed about 231,000 people at the end of fiscal 2025. One thousand positions is 0.4% of the workforce.
This matters less for Disney's stock than for the company's storytelling ability. The real test is whether a consolidated marketing department actually helps Disney reach audiences more effectively.
