Paramount home entertainment chief exits amid layoffs

Dennis Maguire, Paramount Pictures’ head of home entertainment, has left the company as part of a restructuring.

The Melrose Ave. studio this week cut nearly 40 jobs as parent company Viacom Inc. has implemented wider cost-cutting measures. Besides Paramount, Viacom’s cable channels, including TV Land and MTV, have been affected.

Paramount will name a replacement for Maguire in the coming weeks, a studio spokesperson said Friday.

Maguire joined Paramount in 2006 as president of international home entertainment.

In 2011, he was promoted to president of worldwide home media distribution for Paramount Pictures, a position that gave him oversight of sales, marketing and distribution for the studio’s movies on DVD, digital and VOD, as well as TV licensing.

Before joining Paramount, he spent 23 years in Walt Disney Co.’s home entertainment business.

Variety first reported Maguire’s departure.

Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said this week at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference that the company’s wide restructuring would save a total of $250 million a year and that the cutbacks would be largely completed by the end of this month.

A Paramount Pictures spokesperson said Wednesday that the job cuts at the studio “are designed to realign resources and create efficiencies in line with the evolving business environment.”

In another recent change for the home entertainment division, Paramount announced last month that Universal Pictures will handle international distribution of physical DVDs and Blu-rays of Paramount titles. The five-year agreement begins in July with Britain and will expand to other countries.

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