Senior executives at Disney are reportedly interested in acquiring Epic Games, and are ‘waiting for the moment’ should the Fortnite developer ever decide to give up its independence. The claim comes from a recent Puck News podcast episode, Sora Is Dead: What Does That Mean for Disney?, featuring host Matt Belloni and guest Alex Heath. “I know for a fact there are senior executives at Disney who want to buy Epic and they’re just waiting for that moment,” Heath said, before adding that there are others on the Disney side who think it’s a terrible idea. Heath argued that Disney would be the ‘most natural home’ for Epic. “For a lot of reasons. For the park integration, can you imagine a Fortnite park to integrating Disney IP into all the open world stuff which they already announced and Disney’s new gaming platform,“ he added.
Nevertheless, Heath realized that since Epic is a founder-controlled company, CEO Tim Sweeney holds the voting power and basically single-handedly decides its fate on his own. Judging by Epic’s history of headbutting with massive corporate entities like Apple, he’s not exactly known for taking the corporate-friendly route. “It’s really up to him. As we saw, he was the guy who went to battle against the app stores, against Apple and Google, to open those up. It’s almost illogical, per se, when you’re running a company like Epic to do something like that,“ explained Heath. Belloni compared this hypothetical scenario to when Steve Jobs’ Pixar was feuding with Disney, before it was eventually acquired once Bob Iger took control of the House of Mouse. In other words, never say never, especially in Hollywood.
Disney attempting to build a bigger presence in the gaming industry wouldn’t be anything new. The company has repeatedly tried to break into the industry — without much success. Starting in the 1990s, it released a wave of movie tie-in games before going deeper into publishing through Disney Interactive Studios. It produced several commercial bombs but also cult favorites, including the dark reimagining of the company’s mascot, Epic Mickey, and the arcade racer Split/Second. Disney also owns LucasArts after acquiring Lucasfilm — even if the studio has shifted away from in-house development. Disregarding those failed ventures, absorbing Fortnite, and by extension other IPs Epic Games owns, could be its biggest shortcut yet. And yes, I believe this would be bigger than Kingdom Hearts, especially today.
“[Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s new CEO] sees it as a linchpin of the entire interactivity of Disney+ where if Disney+ becomes the portal into your entire Disney experience including shopping, gaming, socializing and luxuriating in the Disney brand, Fortnite is a part of that,“ added Belloni. Epic recently announced it was laying off 1,000 employees to stabilize spending on Fortnite, but Heath argued the colorful battle royale remains ‘the future of social media’ for younger audiences. With that in mind, that might just be the cue Disney needs to pull Epic over to the dark side.
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