Paramount plans to lay off 1,000 employees on Wednesday

Paramount Skydance is set to implement its long-awaited layoffs.

David Ellison’s company is preparing to cut around 1,000 positions on Wednesday, a person familiar with the project confirmed to Business Insider. Bloomberg was the first to report the timing and extent of planned reductions.

Paramount may be planning to cut more jobs later, Variety reports reported in August, the company’s new management could lay off between 2,000 and 3,000 employees in total.

Ellison promised investors he could realize $2 billion in savings by merging Paramount with his production company, Skydance. The merger was finalized in August.

Paramount Chairman Jeff Shell previously said Paramount’s budget cuts would be “painful” but quick.

“We don’t want to be a company that does layoffs every quarter,” Shell said at a press briefing in August. reported.

A Paramount software engineer told Business Insider they hope executives will end the layoffs “soon.”

“It’s horrible and stressful, but honestly, I’m used to it,” a marketing strategy staffer said of layoffs at the company, which saw several rounds of layoffs under its previous ownership.

Paramount’s new executives also told employees they will have to return to the office five days a week in early January, and offered those unwilling to comply a severance package.

Ellison, backed by his ultra-rich father Larry Ellison, has made major moves since becoming CEO of Paramount, following the $8 billion merger with Skydance.

He and his team paid $7.7 billion to secure U.S. rights to the UFC through 2030, lured the creators of “Stranger Things” from Netflix and hired Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News while paying $150 million for his contrarian news site, The Free Press.

Its next potential move could be its most ambitious: buying Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount made three private offers for WBD, CNBC reported last week. WBD has said it’s willing to sell itself, even though it’s in the middle of a spinoff project that could complicate things.