Layoffs expected at Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal

As movie studios continue to figure out how to produce and release movies, entertainment companies across the board are trying to restructure to stay in business.

With no relief in sight, another round of major layoffs is expected at Warner Bros. The company began restructuring this summer, when former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was hired as Warner’s chief executive. Bob Greenblatt, who had developed HBO Max as chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, left the company amid restructuring in August.

Major staffing changes are also expected at NBCUniversal, which brought in former Warner Bros. executive Susan Rovner to chair its television and streaming division last month. The network’s streaming service, Peacock, launched earlier this year, with a reported 10 million users signing up for the service since then. On the movie studio side, the release date for Universal’s upcoming film “Jurassic World: Dominion” was pushed to 2022.

Despite the Walt Disney Co.’s good showing with investors so far during the pandemic, some are still saying that the company should devote even more of its resources into its streaming division. Shareholder Daniel Loeb, known as an “activist investor,” said Disney should develop more content for its service Disney+ to compete directly with Netflix.