Disney Parks Laid Off 28,000 Employees
By George Robbins
This pandemic has been nothing but a huge financial drain but there is not much anyone can do because of the threat it poses. There are industries all over the place which are greatly suffering from the fact that they can’t get back to things like they normally would. Unfortunately, those businesses have had no choice but to adapt to the new situation or have their entire livelihoods shut down. Fortunately, there are some safeguards in place to prevent businesses from just losing everything they have, but it doesn’t make things any easier for them. In fact, the full effects of the pandemic are starting to be felt now.
The industry which seems to be suffering the hardest due to the pandemic has been the movie theater industry and, by extension, a good part of the film industry. Movie theaters have been doing their best to get things back up and running the way they were before the virus started the pandemic. Unfortunately, this just cannot be the case as there are restrictions in place that are there to prevent more people from contracting the virus. This means that theaters are limited on the number of people that they are allowed to have be in there at one time, which makes things a little difficult for them to bring in revenue. This still hasn’t changed the fact that they were very much hoping people would want to go back out to the movies.
Recently, the blockbuster ‘Tenet‘ had its theatrical release where it first released internationally and then a week later it released domestically. Unfortunately for both the studio and theaters showing the film, the movie could not create enough draw to really make people want to go back to theaters during a health crisis. This shouldn’t really be much of a surprise, but it apparently was for them because after only three weekends on the market domestically, ‘Tenet’ is really not bringing anything in for the box office. This ended up being the driving force which made studios decide to push back their movie releases and it has theater companies in the U.S. deciding whether they want to stay open or not. Among the studios that decided to push back a lot of their content due to this was Disney.
Disney, like all other companies, is still trying their best to come up with ways of making money at this time and it doesn’t seem like it’s going well. Needless to say, they are still making money, but they will most definitely be reporting a huge loss due to theaters and their parks being shut down for so long. The amount of money they have lost out on this year is staggering to say the least, but they are doing what they think is best to keep making money. Unfortunately, the things they are doing are not great as they have already caught flak for much of what they are doing right now. For instance, the whole release of ‘Mulan’ on Disney+ is essentially cursed, but the $30 premium on the film has definitely made them money.
‘Mulan’ proved to them that they can actually make money outside of theaters for new films, but it just won’t be as much as through theaters at their peak. This is why they pushed all of their big releases, in the hopes that they can have theatrical releases for them when things calm down. What they are really looking forward to is a rise in consumer confidence in theaters once again, but it will be awhile before that happens because the pandemic situation isn’t looking good. Movies aren’t their only way of making money though, as we all well know by now because they have their amusement parks. These have been affected just as harshly as their film sector unfortunately and now it is taking its toll.
Just like their film sector, they have been catching flak for how they are handling their parks side of things. One such reason is because they have apparently been letting COVID-positive employees work in the parks with guests around and around their co-workers. So not only does this make it appear that they don’t care about their employees, but also their customers. On top of this, they have been getting complaints since they started re-opening parks because people didn’t, and don’t, think that it’s safe enough for parks to be opened back up again. This is why the State of California decided not to let them reopen Disneyland because it would make things even more hazardous than they already are. Now, Disney Parks is using this as an excuse to lay off 28,000 employees, citing the fact that the state won’t let them reopen as the reason they had to do it.