DreamWorks Animation cuts back on its staff, as it seemingly moves ahead with plans to outsource more of its work.
Earlier this week, we ran a piece on this site about planned changes at DreamWorks Animation, that would see the firm outsourcing growing chunks of its filmmaking operation. It’s all a story that surfaced originally at the excellent Cartoon Brew site, that told how DreamWorks was going to be looking to third party studios away from the Los Angeles area to undertake increasing amounts of work.
DreamWorks Animation hasn’t commented on the reports, which included the joyous phrase about outsourcing work to ‘tax advantaged/lower cost geographies’. However, a report over at Variety now suggests that things were close to the mark, with news that around 70 staff from the firm have lost their jobs.
There’s lots of cost cutting going on around major Hollywood firms, so – sadly – the news of more job losses isn’t really something to make too many people raise their eyebrows. In the case of DreamWorks, the cuts have come across ‘corporate functions, feature, television and technology departments’, as per the Variety piece.
The particular sadness in the case of DreamWorks Animation is that after a couple of decades where it’s made pretty much all of its films under one roof – with a few exceptions, that have grown in number in recent times – that’s no longer going to be the case. It leaves, in the west coast of America area, both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar as the only ones making their movies with a large team in one place, and investing the required funds to be able to do that.
DreamWorks Animation has a new film out imminently, with the release of Trolls Band Together due in the UK later this month. Beyond that, it has a busy slate of pictures, just ones where the work is being spread to, well, ‘tax advantaged/lower cost geographies’.
Here’s hoping those 70 people directly affected land back on their feet soon.
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