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 executive vps 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 re-upped 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.