Disney's Marvel Makes Huge Shakeups After Flops

Marvel Entertainment division will be folded into other parts of Disney.

Ike Perlmutter has been laid off from Disney, where he served as head of the Marvel Entertainment division, in a move that's said to be part of a cost-cutting initiative.

Perlmutter was famous for both being very tight with the company’s purse strings, and for refusing to let himself be photographed. 

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Perlmutter's division was Marvel Entertainment, a small part of the company centered on consumer products such as video games and comic books. It was separate from Marvel Studios, which is the filmmaking division overseen by Kevin Feige.

Perlmutter was told that the division was now redundant and would be folded into larger Disney  (DIS) - Get Free Report business units, according to the New York Times. Disney has started to eliminate 7,000 jobs, or about about 45 of its global total. 

The company is looking to cut $5.5 billion to improve its financial results, as last year it had its worst year ever, with its stock value falling 44% due to rising labor costs and the increased costs of streaming. This had already been a rough year for Disney as well, as the recent box office underperformance of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” has critics questioning the strength of the once dominant Marvel brand. 

Last year, Perlmutter pushed to have his friend, the activist investor Nelson Peltz, join the Disney board. When this was rebuffed, he started a proxy battle to put himself on the board.

Perlmutter and partner Avi Arad bought Marvel in the 1990s and pushed the company to expand its lucrative merchandising business and to license X-Men and Spider-Man to movie studios. They later sold the majority of Marvel to Disney in 2009 for $4 billion, but Perlmutter proceeded to butt heads with Feige, usually over what he viewed as excessive costs. 

Perlmutter tended to lose when he went up against Feige, who was seen to be a favorite of Disney head Bob Iger. He has not been directly involved with the films since 2015 or Marvel television since 2019.