UPDATE: It is happening again. It is happening again.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but it’s media layoff season! And yesterday, we learned that not even the wild world of animation is safe from the sharp blades of corporate overlords everywhere, as Variety reported more than 200 jobs at DreamWorks Animation will be unceremoniously chopped like so many layers of onion. Presumably, those animators will find a new home in an ogre-filled swamp somewhere, which is not much of a comfort, even if some of the real estate is kinda homey.
Needless to say, this is very bad, especially since this is pretty much only happening because DreamWorks overlord NBCUniversal was just acquired by new überoverlord Comcast for a hot $3.8 billion—prompting some (hi!) to wonder how the hell any company that can drop ten digits worth of dollars on anything can excuse the wanton destruction of hundreds of livelihoods. “These are difficult but necessary moves,” Jeff Shell, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, explained oh so helpfully. Guess that’s settled, then.
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