Anonymous Content made a round of redundancies on Friday, affecting around 8% of the company’s 170-strong workforce.
The talent management and production company cut staff across all divisions, including representation, television, film, literary, media rights and branded entertainment.
Insiders familiar with Anonymous cited Hollywood labour strikes and a volatile overall entertainment market as reasons for the job cuts. Affected employees were notified on Friday afternoon.
Anonymous is also in the final stages of naming a new chief executive officer, an insider added. The company counts Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, as a minority investor.
Anonymous produces, develops, finances and manages the distribution of a variety of content, including films, series and documentaries. Notable projects developed and sold include HBO’s long-running anthology “True Detective”, the Rami Malek starrer “Mr. Robot” and the Emmy Award-winning comedy hit “Schitt’s Creek”. Notable films include The Revenant and the Oscar-winning Spotlight.
In addition, Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan’s feature film team-up “Foe” has just been released. Upcoming projects include an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys, Taika Waititi’s Time Bandits and Alfonso Cuaron and Cate Blanchett’s Disclaimer.
Anonymous is hardly the only company to cut back in the past five months, as strikes and market shifts in the legacy and streaming space continue to wreak havoc. In August, Fifth Season (formerly Endeavor Content, another production house) laid off 30 staff. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max operation also recently cut marketing staff, and Amazon laid off employees in its global communications department.
