The Walt Disney Company has laid off Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter amid recent cost-cutting efforts, the company confirmed to The New York Times (NYT) Wednesday.
The billionaire media mogul sold Marvel to Disney back in 2009 for $4 billion, a deal that remains one of the company’s most effective and lucrative acquisitions. Disney CEO Bob Iger began a spring cleaning within the company Monday, cutting 7,000 jobs equating to roughly 4% of the company’s global workforce, the NYT reported. The move is part of $5.5 billion worth of eliminations designed to boost Disney’s financial growth.
Iger called the recent measures a “strategic realignment for the company” in a staff email obtained by media outlet IGN.
Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter Out at Disney https://t.co/15OiNacncD
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) March 29, 2023
Perlmutter was known to be confrontational with other executives within the Walt Disney media empire, the NYT reported. He wanted to fire Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige in 2015 after an alleged fight about “Doctor Strange” finances, but Iger stepped in to halt the process, according to the outlet. Perlmutter lost creative control over Marvel’s film subsidiary that same year. (RELATED: Disney Has Officially Taken Over The Entertainment Industry)
“And in 2015, he was intent on firing Kevin Feige who was running Marvel’s studio … and I thought that was a mistake and stepped in to prevent that from happening,” Bob Iger said in a February interview with CNBC.