Film Production
Film & TV Producers Guild CEO Kulmeet Makkar passes on
MUMBAI: May does not seem to have brought with it good news. Early this morning, the CEO of the Film & Television Producers Guild Kulmeet Makkar passed on after suffering a massive heart attack. He was in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, where he had been since the lockdown due to the Covid2019 pandemic.
Makkar had spent more than three decades in the entertainment industry, with stints at Saregama, and Reliance Entertainment as founder CEO of Big Music & Home Entertainment. He was also president & CEO at Shreya Entertainment before taking up the position as Guild’s CEO in 2010.
Since then, he had been instrumental in working with several industry leaders who served as presidents of the association. And he spent years tirelessly pushing the agenda of the industry to the government and various international television and film bodies.
One of the prime partnerships he had managed get going was with the Producers Alliance for Cinema & Television, the UK-body representing independent producers. This has helped facilitate ease of production in the UK and vice-versa.
Makkar was working on setting up a trust – to which Netflix has pledged to contribute $1 million – to help the daily wage earners (who have been affected by Covid2019) in the film and television industry.
He is survived by his wife, a daughter and a son.
Film Production
Disney to cut 1,000 jobs under new chief executive
The entertainment giant’s freshly installed boss inherits a restructuring already in motion, with marketing and corporate roles bearing the brunt
CALIFORNIA: Walt Disney is preparing to slash up to 1,000 jobs in the coming weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported, as the entertainment giant’s freshly installed chief executive moves swiftly to trim fat and tighten the ship.
The cuts, less than 1 per cent of Disney’s global workforce of 231,000, will fall hardest on marketing and corporate roles. The planning, notably, began before D’Amaro formally took the top job in March, suggesting the new boss inherited a restructuring already in motion rather than one of his own making.
Driving the push is Asad Ayaz, Disney’s newly appointed chief marketing officer, who in January assumed command of a unified, company-wide marketing operation spanning film, television and streaming. His consolidation drive has been given a suitably cinematic internal name: Project Imagine.
The move is modest by Disney’s recent standards. Between 2023 and 2025, under former chief executive Bob Iger, the company eliminated roughly 8,000 positions across several brutal rounds of cuts, saving $7.5 billion, comfortably exceeding its own targets. As recently as June 2025, several hundred more jobs were axed across Disney Entertainment, hitting film and television marketing, publicity, casting, development and corporate finance.
Disney’s structural headaches are well-documented: shrinking streaming margins, a weakened box office, and fierce competition from Amazon and YouTube gnawing at its flanks. The company is merging its Disney+ and Hulu teams into a single app, has brought in consultants from Bain & Co to guide its broader cost strategy, and is betting heavily on digital growth.
The wider entertainment industry offers little comfort. Sony Pictures, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have all taken the knife to their workforces in recent years, and further cuts loom if Paramount’s acquisition of Warner goes through.
For D’Amaro, the message is clear: there will be no honeymoon period. The magic kingdom still has some cost-cutting spells left to cast.
