After months of intense speculation over a possible move to the West Coast, DC Entertainment has split the difference and will move its digital, multimedia, and consumer product operations as well as administrative functions to Burbank, Calif., and keep its editorial and publishing operations in New York City, where DC Comics has been for the past 75 years. DCE president Diane Nelson acknowledged there will be layoffs, and one report claims as many as 50 people may be let go, about 20% of DC's current workforce. Relocation should be complete by the end of 2011.

DC Entertainment's Nelson said the move would provide “maximum growth, success, and efficiency in the future. Our two offices will stretch and build their respective areas of focus, while prioritizing and aggressively striving to connect and cooperate more strongly than ever before between them and with their colleagues at Warner Bros.”

Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, to whom Nelson reports, said, “This strategic business realignment allows us to fully integrate and expand the DC brand in feature films as well as across multiple distribution platforms of Warner Bros. and Time Warner. We are creating a seamless, cohesive unit that will bring even more great characters and content to consumers everywhere.”

While the move appears to focus on DCE’s digital and multimedia operations, it will also affect business units related to feature films, TV, and video games as well as “administrative functions.” Offices will be located in a “Warner Bros. managed property in Burbank.”

In a phone interview with Nelson, she acknowledged the possibility of layoffs without citing a specific number. But a report in the Los Angeles Times claims as many as 50 of DC Comics' 250 employees may be laid off.

Asked to outline the reasoning behind the decision to move certain departments to the West Coast, Nelson emphasized that it “was not about cost-cutting. We looked at many factors.” She said that the company looked at “operations and how we do work. We looked at it geographically and financially; we looked at the effects on our people and looked for effeciencies and ways to collaborate. Publishing has been in New York for many years, so we looked at the culture of publishing and at our creative talent. But there was no single thing driving our decision.”

Asked for practical details about how the two geographical sides of the company will “connect and cooperate,” Nelson said the entire DCE management team—herself, creative director Geoff Johns, executive v-p John Rood, and copublishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee—will be charged with staying in close contact with each office. “Dan [Didio, who heads the DC Universe editorial and book publishing] will also work on digital; Jim [Lee, who heads up digital] will have some responsibilities for publishing as will the rest of us, myself, Geoff and John. We’ll all need to travel so we can be present in each office. We’ll talk on a daily basis, we’ll use video-conferencing, and we’ll use every opportunity to make sure we’re working together.”

She declined to go into specifics about the move of Warner Consumer Products, “our licensing business,” or to give more details about which departments were to be included in “administrative functions,” which she called a “catchall phrase for a lot of departments that we’re still talking with.” She also declined to say where the DC marketing and sales departments or the publicity department will eventually be located, two key departments that went unmentioned in the DCE statement.

Much the same for DC’s Wildstorm imprint, based in La Jolla, Calif., just outside San Diego, originally a separate company founded by DC copublisher and artist Jim Lee and acquired by DC in 1999. While Nelson confirmed that the Wildstorm line will end as a separate imprint and that the characters and editorial staff will now operate under the DC Universe, she declined to confirm or deny whether the staff would be based in California or New York. “We’re still looking at the specifics and talking to people in all of these departments, and I can’t say more about them at this time,” she said.

But Nelson also emphasized that “there’s a lot of good news that’s coming out of this. There will be promotions as well as some layoffs”;she added that her tenure at DC “has been exciting.”