Disney cuts, Fox backs creators

Disney is getting ready to cut as many as 1,000 jobs in the coming weeks, with many of the reductions expected in marketing, according to reports on April 8 and April 9. The cuts would be the first large layoff wave under Chief Executive Officer Josh D’Amaro, who took over after Disney’s March 18, 2026 shareholder meeting. (variety.com, thewaltdisneycompany.com) Disney is not cutting from a position of collapse. In fiscal 2025, the company reported $94.4 billion in revenue and $17.6 billion in total segment operating income, so this looks more like a company trying to keep margins tight than a company trying to survive. (thewaltdisneycompany.com) The scale also matters in context. Disney said it had about 231,000 employees at the end of fiscal 2025, so 1,000 jobs would be less than one-half of one percent of its workforce, but those cuts can still hit hard if they land in decision-making teams like marketing and corporate operations. (thewaltdisneycompany.com, newsweek.com) This is also not Disney’s first pass with the cost knife. In 2023, after Bob Iger returned, Disney announced about 7,000 job cuts as part of a broader savings push, and the new round suggests the cleanup never fully ended. (variety.com) While Disney is trimming salaried overhead, Fox is trying a different shortcut: letting internet creators do some of the audience-building work that studios used to do with big development budgets. Its free streaming service Tubi announced a March 19, 2026 partnership with TikTok called the Creatorverse Incubator to help creators turn short-form followings into original long-form shows. (corporate.tubitv.com) Tubi can make that pitch because it already has scale. Fox says the service now reaches more than 100 million monthly active users and streams about 1 billion hours a month, which gives creators a television-sized outlet without the cost structure of a traditional cable channel. (corporate.tubitv.com) Fox’s position in this story comes from an older deal. After Disney bought most of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets in 2019, the remaining Fox Corporation leaned harder into news, sports, and ad-supported streaming, then bought Tubi for about $440 million in 2020. (sec.gov, foxcorporation.com) That helps explain why the two companies now look like mirror images. Disney still carries the payroll and infrastructure of a giant studio that makes theme parks, films, television, and streaming, while Fox is using a lighter model where a free platform can test creator-led shows, measure ad response, and move on quickly if they miss. (thewaltdisneycompany.com, corporate.tubitv.com) The common thread is that both companies are trying to lower the price of finding an audience. Disney is doing it by cutting internal costs, and Fox is doing it by borrowing audiences that creators already built on TikTok and other platforms before a show ever reaches Tubi. (variety.com, corporate.tubitv.com) For Hollywood workers, those are two versions of the same pressure. The old studio model paid large in-house teams to develop, market, and distribute entertainment, and the newer model keeps asking which of those jobs can be cut, outsourced, or replaced by creators who arrive with fans attached. (thewaltdisneycompany.com, observer.com)