Paramount Skydance is about to implement its long-anticipated layoffs.
David Ellison’s company is set to eliminate about 1,000 positions on Wednesday, a person familiar with the plans confirmed to Business Insider. Bloomberg was first to report the timing and size of the planned cuts.
Paramount may be planning to shed more jobs later on, as Variety reported in August that the company’s new leadership could let go of 2,000 to 3,000 employees in total.
Ellison promised investors he could deliver $2 billion in cost savings when he merged Paramount with his production company, Skydance. The merger closed in August.
Paramount president Jeff Shell previously said that Paramount’s cuts would be “painful” but swift.
“We do not want to be a company that has layoffs every quarter,” Shell said at a press briefing in August, Deadline reported.
One Paramount software engineer told Business Insider that they hoped leadership would get layoffs “over with soon.”
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“It’s awful and stressful, but honestly used to it,” a staffer in marketing strategy said of layoffs at the company, which had multiple rounds of cuts under its previous ownership.
Paramount’s new leaders have also told employees that they’ll have to return to the office five days a week in early January, and offered those who are unwilling to comply a severance package.
Ellison, backed by his ultrawealthy father Larry Ellison, has made major moves since becoming Paramount’s CEO, following the $8 billion merger with Skydance.
He and his team paid $7.7 billion to secure US UFC rights, lured the “Stranger Things” creators from Netflix, and hired Bari Weiss as the top editor at CBS News while paying $150 million for her contrarian news site, The Free Press.
His potential next move could be his most ambitious: buying Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount has made three private offers for WBD, CNBC reported last week. WBD said it’s open to selling itself, though it’s in the middle of a spinoff plan that could complicate matters.
