Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Chapek announced Friday companywide cost-cutting measures and told division leaders that layoffs are likely, according to an internal memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The austerity measures, which include a ban on all but essential work travel and a freeze on new hires for all but a few critical positions, come days after Disney reported lackluster quarterly earnings and a $1.5 billion quarterly loss at its streaming business, significantly wider than Wall Street analysts had predicted.

In the memo, which was addressed to all executives at the senior vice president level or above, Mr. Chapek said a task force, led by finance chief Christine McCarthy and general counsel Horacio Gutierrez, would review marketing, content and administrative spending across the entire company and recommend cuts.

“I’m fully aware this will be a difficult process for many of you and your teams,” Mr. Chapek said in the memo. “We are going to have to make tough and uncomfortable decisions.”

Mr. Chapek said in the memo that in the process of reviewing all of Disney’s costs, the company will “look for every avenue of operations and labor to find savings.” He added, “we do anticipate some staff reductions as part of this review.”

The company didn’t indicate the number of possible layoffs in the memo, but also said that travel should be limited and would require approval from executives.

“I have no doubt we will achieve our goals and create a more nimble company,” Mr. Chapek said in the memo.

Companies across the media and technology sector have been announcing layoffs and purse-tightening measures as big bets on streaming and the metaverse made during the coronavirus pandemic show signs of unraveling.

Since launching its flagship Disney+ service in late 2019, Disney’s streaming business has gained 235 million subscribers globally across all its video platforms, which include Hulu, ESPN+, the Star service in Europe and Hotstar in Asia. The growth transformed Disney over a short time into a massive player in the streaming world, capable of taking on Netflix Inc.

and other rivals in dozens of markets around the world.

That growth, though, has come with a big cost: Disney’s streaming segment has lost more than $8 billion in the last three years. Mr. Chapek has long insisted that Disney+ will be profitable in 2024 but has reduced his projections for the number of subscribers the service will sign up. This week he said the profitability target assumes there are no meaningful shifts in economic conditions.

A cafe at Disney’s Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fla., this past summer. The company laid off thousands of workers during the pandemic when its parks were shut.

Photo: Zack Wittman for The Wall Street Journal

During an earnings call with investors Tuesday, Ms. McCarthy, the finance chief, said that Disney would aggressively pursue spending cuts, and that “some of those are going to provide some near-term savings and others are going to drive longer-term structural benefits.”

Ms. McCarthy also referenced steps the company took at its theme parks division during the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, with parks shuttered, the company laid off thousands of employees and began work on new technologies to manage workers more efficiently.

Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, said this week it would eliminate 11,000 positions after growth in its virtual reality platforms was slower than it had hoped.

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., owner of Hollywood’s oldest film studio and the premium streaming service HBOMax has cut more than 1,000 positions as the company struggles to get out from under a hefty debt load.

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal also is looking to reduce its head count and is offering buyouts to employees who are over the age of 57 and have been with the company at least 10 years, people familiar with the matter said.

Disney shares have fallen about 40% since the start of the year. Friday, they closed at $95.01 a share, having climbed 5% on the day after a rout earlier this week in the wake of its earnings report.

Mr. Chapek has faced challenges since his tenure as chief executive began in February 2020. He has managed through a global pandemic that shut the company’s theme parks and cruise line business. He also has been pressured by activist investor Dan Loeb, whose Third Point LLC took a new stake in the company during the summer.

Mr. Loeb called on Mr. Chapek to make several changes to Disney, and high on his list was more aggressive cost cutting. He also called for an overhaul of the board to include more media and digital advertising expertise and for Disney to purchase Comcast’s minority stake in Hulu. In September, Disney added Carolyn Everson, a veteran tech and media executive, as a director, and Mr. Loeb agreed to a standstill over the makeup of the company’s board.

In June, the board of Disney voted to renew Mr. Chapek’s contract for another three years. His fate had been closely watched after he tussled with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Disney’s public stand—amid pressure from employees and activists—against the Parental Rights in Education bill, a piece of state legislation—now passed—that curbs classroom instruction on sexual identity and gender in elementary schools.

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com