Film Academy Layoffs Hit Archive And Preservation Staff Amid Latest Restructuring Moves

deadline.com:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has laid off about 16 employees, all of whom worked in the Oscar organization’s collecting and preservations departments.

That amounts to about 2% of the Academy’s workforce of almost 800. We hear the layoffs took place Wednesday. The moves are the latest amid the Academy’s broader restructuring under CEO Bill Kramer, who has been streamlining operations across AMPAS’ membership and awards programs, education and emerging talent initiatives, collection and preservation initiatives, and its screenings and public programs since taking on the chief executive role in 2022.

Since then, the Academy has made key moves on the streamlining front, most recently in May, when it announced Amy Homma being promoted to Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; Jennifer Davidson, upped to the newly created role of Chief Marketing and Communications Officer; and Matt Severson, the director of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, taking on the newly created position of EVP Academy Collection and Preservation. “As part of our efforts to bring all of our collecting and preservation departments together — the archive, the library, and the collecting unit of the museum — we have spent the last several months assessing the structure of these teams,” Kramer told AMPAS staff in a memo obtained by Deadline (read it in full below). “As part of this work in building the new Academy Collection and Preservation Department, some team members will be leaving the Academy this week.” Kramer over the summer secured an early renewal of his contract, a deal that runs through July 2028.