Lionsgate Offers Voluntary Buyout to Employees As Studio Restructures

In a transfer to reduce prices, Lionsgate is providing workers in america voluntary severance and retirement packages, its CEO wrote in a memo to employees on Monday.

“As we continue to move toward the full separation of the studio and Starz in a challenging operating environment, Lionsgate’s Executive Committee has approved a multifaceted strategic plan to enhance productivity and achieve greater cost efficiencies,” chief Jon Feltheimer mentioned within the electronic mail.

A goal for the variety of employees reductions on the Santa Monica-based firm was not disclosed within the word and a rep for the corporate declined to elaborate on the memo. As of its newest annual report, Lionsgate employed 1,500 staffers worldwide.

The studio, which counts a 20,000-title movie and TV library amongst its belongings, has launched a sequence of underperforming titles previously two months, together with Borderlands ($32 million in field workplace receipts globally), The Crow ($23.5 million), 1992 ($2.9 million), The Killer’s Sport ($5.8 million) and By no means Let Go ($8.3 million). That doesn’t embrace Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which the studio distributed however the director self-financed to the tune of a $4 million bow for a $120 million-budgeted function.

Lionsgate additionally gave workers an up to date return-to-office coverage, saying all evps and above will want to be working on-site 5 days per week beginning within the new 12 months. “All other Lionsgate full-time employees will be required to adhere to our current corporate policy of working in the office at least four days a week,” the CEO wrote. “We are a creative organization that relies on communication and in-person collaboration, and we need ‘all hands on deck’ to continue to operate effectively in these challenging times.”

Feltheimer, who has run Lionsgate since 2000, has just lately reupped his contract on the studio, which prolonged his deal as CEO in August for 5 years via July 31, 2029. Yr to date, Lionsgate inventory is buying and selling down about 30 p.c.