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The original was posted on /r/artificial by /u/Block-Busted on 2024-03-16 22:21:24.

Cartoon Brew posted an article about how DreamWorks is planning to go through a massive layoff in coming months:

Dreamworks Animation To Significantly Cut Staff In Coming Months (Exclusive)

Dreamworks Animation is firing on all cylinders right now. It’s looking to repeat first place with Kung Fu Panda 4 at the U.S. box office this weekend, and the newly-released teaser for Chris Sanders’s The Wild Robot was received with unbridled enthusiasm. But the mood inside of the iconic Glendale, California studio was glum this week as an untold number of workers were informed that they would be let go.

The studio insists that no one is being laid off. It is, as Dreamworks Animation chief operating officer Randy Lake put it a few months ago, an instance of downsizing through “natural attrition,” in which employment contracts are simply not being renewed.

However, the sheer number of people whose contracts aren’t being renewed has demoralized staffers and left many wondering about the future direction of the studio. While there are no specific numbers on how many people are being let go, the number is well into the hundreds. Many departments are being cut in half, and the creative staff on features could be reduced by as much as, if not more than, 40-50%.

Rank-and-file workers at the company don’t know exactly how many people have been let go outside of their own departments, and some are trying to piece together the details by comparing notes between departments. The studio declined to provide a specific figure to Cartoon Brew.

Cartoon Brew spoke with numerous workers at the studio, all of whom declined to be identified for fear of retribution. A studio representative responded on background to our queries.

Here is a more detailed explanation of what is happening:

Why are so many people being let go all at once? A studio rep explained that Dreamworks has multiple large productions – Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot – that are winding down around the same time, and the timing of new projects doesn’t sync up with the end dates of these current productions. While the studio works to minimize the gaps, sometimes the dates don’t align. The departing workers who are wrapping up on Wild Robot currently have end dates ranging from mid-April through July.

But surely there must be more to the story? Dreamworks intended to produce two features mostly in-house in 2026, but workers were told in early February that production would not move forward on one of those films, a Bollywood-themed film that had multiple working titles, including Another Me.

Dreamworks told Cartoon Brew that the film was never greenlit, so it wasn’t technically cancelled, however multiple studio workers confirmed to us that they were told last month by department heads that there would be significant reductions in staffing due to this particular project not moving forward.

Some workers were told in meetings that the project wasn’t moving forward because it was deemed not marketable to broad audiences. A Dreamworks rep disputed this characterization and said that there were numerous reasons why a film might not move into production, with marketability being just one of those factors.

Further reducing the need for staff, Dreamworks does not currently have any fully in-house productions scheduled for 2025. While all of Dreamworks’s film are developed in-house at Glendale, just one of their three 2025 releases is being animated in-house. Workers confirmed that even this film will use a significantly reduced crew since the production is being split between Sony Pictures Imageworks in Canada and the Dreamworks in-house crew.

Will the studio rehire people who are being let go? Some workers have been told that the studio hopes to return to a “normal” size in 2025, but it is unlikely that it will grow again to its current size anytime in the near future. That’s because the studio told workers last fall that it was shifting away from fully in-house animation production as part of new cost-cutting measures ordered by parent company Comcast-NBCUniversal.

At the time, Lake said the goal was to reduce production costs by 20%. As a result, the studio is outsourcing parts of some of its productions to third-party studios in other countries; these other studios include Sony Pictures Imageworks in Canada, Jellyfish Pictures in the U.K., and Mikros Animation in India and Canada.

…which prompted this guy to post these replies:

Pixar to be next. Mark my word.

Producers can’t stand working with talent because they’re envious of people with talent. There purpose in life is to take credit for others work and abuse talent every chance they get.

I use to work at Disney - this isn’t true. The business model for most of their non-A listed projects utilizes extensive outsourcing. As does Dreamworks. The only reason it hasn’t extended to large projects like Frozen is quality; and those quality margins are fading away. Furthermore, AI or automation is truly happening and will roll into productions over the next 5 years at a hard-lined pace. I believe Dreamworks just cut nearly all of their matte painters - and it’s no coincidence that tools like Midjourney can easily produce mattes now with high precision (I’m sure some matte painters would die hearing this - but it’s true). Animation automation is around the corner - there are already research projects that are successfully showing text to 3D generation and text to animation. So ya, Pixar among the rest is on a downward spiral to layoffs.

The dream is over unfortunately. It’s only a matter of time that animation studios operate with a skeleton crew performing purely directorial/supervision roles.

I wouldn’t bet against reality. I made the transition years ago. These next 5 years are the turning point. Anyone that doesn’t look outside of animation now is just asking for it.

…while also saying this in a separate thread:

AI is basically automation of jobs. It’s a mind shift. The days of studios needing hundreds of artists will go away. While independents, like Bill Plympton, will now be able to make long form stories more effortlessly. So to aspire to work for a studio would be a mistake, but to aspire to be a storyteller and produce your own content would be the move.

To further emphasis the advice here - Dreamworks Animation just wrapped on Kung Fu Panda and immediately started laying off staff. Activision just dumped 1900 people after a wildly successful year of games. That is the business model and AI or automation is going to embolden the no-talent producers to keep doing this over-and-over again. So use AI to take the storytelling away from the studios…

…followed by another person’s reply:

This person said it best. I would like to add that due to all the layoffs and industry professionals looking for work, it would be best for most people to try to go indie anyway… That is the reason I’ve been trying to make a makeshift animation team. If anyone reading this comment would like to network with me, hit me up

Basically, this guy, who claims to have worked at Disney before, seems to think that DreamWorks fired all its matte painters because AI like Midjourney can easily produce mattes now with high precision. Based on these, do you believe that Pixar will have a massive layoff very soon due to AI? Why or why not?