Kevin Hart's media empire Hartbeat faces layoffs and internal chaos
Bloomberg investigation reveals Hartbeat spent the past year in significant internal turmoil with leadership conflicts and strategic disarray.
Objective Facts
A Bloomberg investigation published May 10 reveals that Hartbeat has spent the past year in significant internal turmoil with leadership conflicts, strategic disarray and a new deal with Authentic Brands Group that some employees inside the company see not as a lifeline but as a signal that Hart is preparing to wind things down. The company was valued at $650 million when Abry Partners bought a 15 percent stake in 2022, but by December 2025 faced layoffs of about a dozen employees following a November 2024 layoff of approximately 20 people representing a quarter of the workforce. After Hart announced he would be CEO in January 2025, he went weeks and sometimes months without visiting the office, with Jeff Clanagan and Eric Stoneburner running the company day to day. Hartbeat fired the heads of its TV division, Tiffany Brown and Mike Stein, who were in the middle of producing a TV show based on the film Barbershop for Amazon and a second season of the animated series Lil Kev.
Left-Leaning Perspective
This story has not generated distinct left-leaning coverage. The reporting on Hartbeat's troubles comes primarily from business and entertainment outlets like Bloomberg, TMZ, Inc., and Variety, which approach it as a neutral business story rather than through a political lens. No left-leaning commentators or outlets have specifically weighed in with ideological framing of Hart's company's collapse. The coverage focuses on factual reporting of management failures and industry headwinds rather than cultural or political critique. Where commentary exists, it is primarily from business analysts and entertainment journalists examining whether celebrity-led media companies can sustain themselves in a changed market environment. No left-leaning outlets identified this as a story about labor conditions, workers' rights, or inequality that might typically attract progressive critique. Left-leaning coverage omits any framing that might connect Hartbeat's failure to systemic issues in entertainment or tech industry management.
Right-Leaning Perspective
This story has not generated distinct right-leaning coverage. Right-leaning outlets have not framed Hartbeat's struggles through a political or ideological lens. Business-focused outlets like Bloomberg, which broke the story, and entertainment trade publications cover the company's implosion as a straightforward business failure rather than as an exemplar of any conservative principle. No right-leaning commentators have seized on Hart's management failures as evidence of broader failures in celebrity entrepreneurs or woke business culture. The coverage remains factual and business-oriented without ideological framing from the right. Right-leaning outlets have not significantly covered this story at all, which may reflect that it lacks the culture-war dimensions or political implications that drive conservative media attention. There is no evidence of right-leaning outlets using Hart's struggles to critique celebrity activism, corporate diversity initiatives, or other conservative talking points. Right-leaning coverage omits any broader political or cultural framing of the Hartbeat collapse.
Deep Dive
Hartbeat is one of a handful of firms run by major celebrities that capitalized on the streaming boom to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at valuations that boggled the mind, but this has become more of an issue as the industry suffers through a recession, with these companies too big to subsist on producer fees and too small to command ownership of most of their output, yet like those companies, Hartbeat must figure out how to deliver on a valuation that is far too high given its financial performance. The company's failures reflect broader industry trends: While Hartbeat expanded, Hollywood entered a recession with economic uncertainty, rising interest rates and growing skepticism about the profitability of streaming causing major media companies to fire staff and pull back on buying new projects, though Hartbeat was a little more insulated than most because talent like Hart could usually still get a project made, yet producing projects without Hart in a starring role became more difficult. Hart's management approach proved problematic. After announcing he would be CEO in January 2025, Hart went weeks and sometimes months without visiting the office, empowering Jeff Clanagan, a former concert promoter and movie producer who had helped make Hart a major star by producing stand-up specials, and CFO Eric Stoneburner to run the company day to day, with Clanagan continuing to operate Codeblack Films while serving in a senior capacity at Hartbeat. When employees complained about Clanagan using company resources for his own ventures with HR, they received no response, and in light of the attention being on Codeblack, Hart's own company witnessed slowed projects and falling views on YouTube. This paralleled earlier management conflicts: Jay Levine suggested scaling back Hartbeat's ambition, leading to the shutdown of its New York office, pointing out that pushing for growth in so many different directions would not work, but Kev wasn't ready to minimize his vision yet, and their disagreements led to Levine exiting the company by the end of 2024. The Authentic Brands Group deal signals strategic retreat rather than growth. Hart's employees worry that this deal marks the beginning of the end of Hartbeat, the comedian's namesake media company, though the announcement made no mention of Hartbeat, the agreement gave Hart money to buy out his private equity partner in the company over time and regain control of the use of his name, image and likeness, with Hart's endorsement deals, which had been a pillar of Hartbeat business, now handled by Authentic. What remains to be seen: whether Hart will attempt a restructuring of remaining Hartbeat operations, whether the company will be fully wound down, and whether Hart will attempt to acquire control of Hartbeat entirely or gradually cede it to Authentic. The broader question for the industry is whether celebrity-led media companies can survive without constant founder involvement—a model Hart explicitly rejected when building Hartbeat.