{"id":606282,"date":"2026-04-15T18:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/606282\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T18:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:50:07","slug":"disneys-massive-layoffs-have-seemingly-hit-marvel-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/606282\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney’s Massive Layoffs Have Seemingly Hit Marvel Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Disney prepares to woo movie theater owners and press at its CinemaCon panel<\/a> this Thursday, new CEO Josh D\u2019Amaro<\/a> sent an email to employees announcing a sweeping wave of layoffs across all of Disney\u2019s divisions. As the dust still begins to settle, it seems one area that has been hit hard is Marvel Studios.<\/p>\n

Deadline<\/a> reports that Disney\u2019s layoffs, anticipated to have cut around 1,000 jobs across the company, have led to a roughly 8% reduction in staff at Marvel. While these layoffs are broadly impacting each area of Marvel at both of its offices in New York and Burbank\u2014running the gamut of cuts to its comics publisher, to Marvel Studios, to legal and financial departments, and more\u2014one area reportedly hit significantly by layoffs is one of Marvel Studios\u2019 most enduring teams: its visual development team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Initially reported by Forbes<\/a> and backed up by Deadline\u2014as members of the team began confirming lost jobs on social media\u2014it\u2019s believed that almost the entirety of the visual development team has been laid off, leaving a skeleton crew that will now oversee the hiring of outside contractors on a per-project basis. Sources speaking to Forbes alleged that the particular reasons for the visual development team\u2019s reduction are in part due to Marvel\u2019s own changes to its upcoming production slate<\/a>, as well as the cost-cutting impacts of the broader round of layoffs at Disney this week.<\/p>\n

Headed by creative director Ryan Meinerding, the concept artist whose work has helped shape<\/a> the Marvel Cinematic Universe\u2019s vision since the first Iron Man movie, the visual development team has been responsible for decades of concept art and design work across Marvel Studios\u2019 cinematic history. Their work even goes beyond behind-the-scenes concepts: the visual development team\u2019s work has been packaged into artbook after artbook<\/a> (Meinerding even has his own dedicated one<\/a>).<\/p>\n

When Marvel reveals first looks at its adaptations of its legendary superheroes, it is more often than not through the work of the visual development team, which are then plastered across internet articles, across posters at events, on merchandise, and more. Even perhaps the most iconic version<\/a> of the opening logo sequence that opens the studios\u2019 movies (tweaked beginning with last year\u2019s Captain America: Brave New World<\/a> to offer more individually stylized ones) puts the concept work of the visual development team front and center, iconic concept art of Marvel\u2019s heroes blurring with script lines before giving way to the studio\u2019s logo forming.<\/p>\n

In a memo to staff earlier this week<\/a> confirming the layoffs, D\u2019Amaro described the cuts as a reflection not on the work of the laid-off workers but on \u201cour continual evaluation of how to more effectively manage our resources and reinvest in our businesses.\u201d How effectively managing the reported gutting of a team that helped shape one of the biggest cinematic universes in modern moviemaking will go remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Disney prepares to woo movie theater owners and press at its CinemaCon panel this Thursday, new CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,3494,3078],"class_list":["post-606282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-disney","tag-marvel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}