Disney Fires Film Production President
Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group President Nina Jacobson has become the first high-level casualty of a major restructuring of the studio’s movie operation that will see 650 employees lose their jobs and will save the Burbank company $90 million to $100 million a year in overhead, the Los Angeles Times reports. Jacobson, 40, one of Hollywood’s most respected movie executives, was fired Monday morning by her boss, studio Chairman Dick Cook, when she called him from the hospital room where her partner was about to deliver their third child. Despite the record-breaking performance of Disney’s current release, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” she was hearing rumors and wanted reassurance that her job was safe. It wasn’t. Cook told Jacobson , who had two years to go on her three-year contract , that Oren Aviv, the studio’s marketing chief, was replacing her as president of production.
