Lionsgate Offers Voluntary Buyout to Employees As Studio Restructures

In a move to cut costs, Lionsgate is offering employees in the United States voluntary severance and retirement packages, its CEO wrote in a memo to staff on Monday.

“As we continue to move toward the full separation of the studio and Starz in a challenging operating environment, Lionsgate’s Executive Committee has approved a multifaceted strategic plan to enhance productivity and achieve greater cost efficiencies,” chief Jon Feltheimer said in the email.

A target for the number of staff reductions at the Santa Monica-based company was not disclosed in the note and a rep for the company declined to elaborate on the memo. As of its latest annual report, Lionsgate employed 1,500 staffers worldwide.

The studio, which counts a 20,000-title film and TV library among its assets, has released a series of underperforming titles in the past two months, including Borderlands ($32 million in box office receipts globally), The Crow ($23.5 million), 1992 ($2.9 million), The Killer’s Game ($5.8 million) and Never Let Go ($8.3 million). That doesn’t include Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which the studio distributed but the director self-financed to the tune of a $4 million bow for a $120 million-budgeted feature.

Lionsgate also gave employees an updated return-to-office policy, saying all evps and above will need to be working on-site five days a week starting in the new year. “All other Lionsgate full-time employees will be required to adhere to our current corporate policy of working in the office at least four days a week,” the CEO wrote. “We are a creative organization that relies on communication and in-person collaboration, and we need ‘all hands on deck’ to continue to operate effectively in these challenging times.”

Feltheimer, who has run Lionsgate since 2000, has recently reupped his contract at the studio, which extended his deal as CEO in August for five years through July 31, 2029. Year to date, Lionsgate stock is trading down about 30 percent.