Paramount Pictures Lays Off Staff in Finance, Business & Legal Affairs and Television

“Transformation is not painless and comes with some hard decisions that we feel are necessary to move our business forward,” COO Andrew Gumpert says in memo to staff

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Paramount

Paramount Pictures laid off 20 staff members in its TV, finance, legal, and business departments on Tuesday as part of a restructuring effort at the Viacom-owned studio, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap on Wednesday.

Paramount Chief Operating Officer Andrew Gumpert addressed the staffing cuts in a memo to employees obtained by TheWrap, stating that the “changes” are intended to help “streamline efficiency, foster talent across multiple divisions of the company, and augment synergy and cross-functionality amongst different teams.”

“As you all are aware, a year ago Viacom kicked off a significant transformation effort to ensure we’re running our business as efficiently as we can – to both save more money, and ensure we can invest in new areas of growth,” Gumpert wrote. “With that comes some exciting, but also necessary changes, including for our studio. In pursuit of this mandate, we have taken a thoughtful and comprehensive look at the organization on an overall, holistic level, and identified where we can make our processes more efficient and better utilize our workforce and resources to maximize success for the company as a whole.”

News of the studio’s layoffs comes just after Paramount Network — also owned by Viacom — was hit with its own round of cuts. Viacom, since CEO Bob Bakish took over in 2016, has undergone a series of moves to attempt to deleverage the business and increase the value of its core assets as part of a broader plan to turn the media and entertainment company around.

In addition to the layoffs, Viacom announced that the studio hired Robert West as VP of production at Paramount TV and also promoted Debra Bergman to head of physical production and Ken Basin to EVP of business affairs.

See the memo in full below.

Dear All,

As you all are aware, a year ago Viacom kicked off a significant transformation effort to ensure we’re running our business as efficiently as we can – to both save more money, and ensure we can invest in new areas of growth. With that comes some exciting, but also necessary changes, including for our studio. In pursuit of this mandate, we have taken a thoughtful and comprehensive look at the organization on an overall, holistic level, and identified where we can make our processes more efficient and better utilize our workforce and resources to maximize success for the company as a whole.

With that perspective in mind, we will be seeing restructuring in our ranks that will streamline efficiency, foster talent across multiple divisions of the company, and augment synergy and cross-functionality amongst different teams.

This transformation is not painless and comes with some hard decisions that we feel are necessary to move our business forward. As a consequence, today we are making some changes across the organization, which will impact the Finance, Legal, Business & Legal Affairs and Television teams. While this transformation impacts a very small number of our work force, it was difficult nonetheless, and we extend our most sincere thanks to the affected team members for their contributions, and wish them the very best in their future endeavors.

As an organization, we continue on a trajectory of renewal and reinvigoration, and I am proud and optimistic to reflect on all we have achieved in the past year and the growth and continued transformation that I see in our future.

Thank you for being valued members of this company, and working together to ensure a bright future for us all.

Best,

Andrew

Variety first reported the layoffs.

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