A week after layoffs at Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm was hit this week with pink slips of its own. More than two dozen staff members were laid off, I have learned.
The cuts came primarily in the company’s financing, licensing and distribution divisions and were not all together unexpected.
In an email to employees earlier this month, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said all significant organization changes at the company would be completed by the end of April.
Sources tell me that this latest round of cuts is presumed to be the last as Lucasfilm fully integrates into its new owner Disney, which bought the Star Wars creators for $4.05 billion in October.
The cuts come after LucasArts, the company’s video game division, shut down production April 3 and laid off about 150 employees. There were also layoffs in Lucasfilm’s animation department after Disneysaid March 11 that it was discontinuing production of Star Wars: The Clone Wars for Cartoon Network and pursuing “a new direction in animated programming.”
About 150 employees in several divisions of Disney Studios were let go last week after a company internal review ordered late last year by CEO Bob Iger and CFO Jay Rasulo to identify superfluous positions and increase efficiency.
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