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Disney owned Maker Studios is to undergo some significant changes, reports claims.
The Wall Street Journal says that around 80 staff are to lose to their jobs. Furthermore, over 55,000 YouTubers currently signed with the company are to be dropped, with Maker ceasing its promotion of the content and the sale of ads.
Currently Maker works with around 60,000 YouTubers.
It hopes to reduce its YouTuber network to around only 300, with these lucky few being more in line with the ‘core values’ of Disney. In return, Maker’s operations will be brought in under the Disney banner.
Apparently, this was all in the works before the recent high-profile split with PewDiePie. He, like many of Maker’s partners, was able to operate largely independently of Disney, and were certainly not subject to the sort of morality clauses that others, such as stars of the Marvel or Star Wars films, are required to sign.
Maker Studios severed ties with PewDiePie earlier this month after the media picked up on his posting of videos containing anti-Semitic remarks. The most contentious depicted two laughing men holding a banner saying ‘Death to all Jews’. Another included a man dressed as Jesus saying ‘Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong’.
Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate,” a spokeswoman for Maker Studios said at the time.
PewDiePie later insisted that he doesn’t support "any kind of hateful attitudes", and that while he understood that "these jokes were ultimately offensive" he created the videos for his audience "as entertainment" and that his channel was "not a place for any serious political commentary".
Disney purchased Maker for $675m in 2014.
