A month into new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro’s tenure, and he’s already making magic happen – by making around 1,000 people disappear from the payroll 🎉. In a memo to the company, D’Amaro announced that these jobs would be eliminated, because who needs employees when you have an endless supply of Interns and coffee, right? ☕️
Among the divisions hit particularly hard by the cuts is a key group within Marvel Studios: The “Visual Development” team, which is involved in the design of each of Marvel’s film and TV productions. You know, the people who actually make the characters look cool and not like they just rolled out of a Hot Topic store 🎀. They’re particularly known for their ingenious translations of Marvel’s signature comic-book costumes into live-action that actual human beings can wear, because let’s be real, who wouldn’t want to wear a full suit of armor to work every day? 🤣
According to Forbes, Disney’s layoffs have hit Marvel “hard”, with the company “losing staff from both New York and Burbank, across most areas of the organization including film and tv production, comics, franchise, finance, and legal. That includes the nearly the entire Academy Award-winning visual development team at Marvel Studios.” Wow, it sounds like they’re really “streamlining” the company – by getting rid of all the people who do the actual work 🙄.
Among those affected: Concept artist and illustrator Wesley Burt, who tweeted “the irony of having a one-on-one HR layoff meeting in the conference room with my Loki mural on it.” Oh, the humanity! 🤣 Maybe he should’ve used his artistic skills to draw a mustache on D’Amaro’s face instead of a mural 🎨.
READ MORE: Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best 🤔. Spoiler alert: the worst one is probably the one where they lay off all the good employees 😜.
Forbes claims that Marvel retained “a skeleton crew of full time production staff remaining in place to coordinate the hiring of resources on a per-project basis.” In other words, they let go of salaried employees in the visual development division, and will instead rely on freelance artists where needed to help design future Marvel Cinematic Universe productions. Because who needs job security when you can have the freedom to work on a project-by-project basis and scramble to find your next paycheck? 🤑
In announcing the company’s layoffs, D’Amaro wrote: “Over the past several months, we have looked at ways in which we can streamline our operations in various parts of the company to ensure we deliver the world-class creativity and innovation our fans value and expect from Disney. Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs. As a result, we will be eliminating roles in some parts of the company and have begun notifying impacted employees.” 📣 Sounds like a lot of corporate jargon to me – can someone translate it into plain English? Maybe something like: “We’re getting rid of people because we want to make more money and look cool doing it”? 💸
Marvel’s next theatrical release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, premieres in theaters on July 31. Avengers: Doomsday follows it to theaters on December 17. Because what’s a better way to spend your Saturday afternoon than watching a movie about superheroes saving the world, while the actual heroes (the employees) are being laid off? 🍿👏
And finally, let’s take a look at 10 Movies That People Believe Might Be Cursed 🎃. Maybe one of them is the movie about Disney’s HR department – now that’s a horror story I’d pay to see 🎥! 👻
Finn McFrame, celebrated satirical mastermind and self-proclaimed “Emperor of Irony,” started his illustrious career as a cinematographer, where his expertise in capturing every single frame of a squirrel stealing a baguette earned him accolades at obscure film festivals.
Born in the glamorous town of Boring, Oregon, Finn grew up with dreams of being a Hollywood director until he realized that satire, not cinema, was his true calling—or at least the one that let him sleep until noon.
Finn McFrame: changing the world, one satirical lens flare at a time.
