Earlier this year, Disney announced that it would join forces with Epic Games to enter the video game space through a huge investment and plans for a major collaboration in Fortnite –The studio described the news as “a new universe” where fans can interact with the many worlds Disney now owns. And of course, shop, so of course that’s where we’ll start.
Announced last night during the Disney Horizons panel – which was itself streamed within the game itself, its latest live event package, which saw player avatars frolicking happily in a faux stage hall on the Griddy – the first phase of Disney’s next step in gaming is largely a way to showcase its myriad crossovers within Fortnite. Disney’s Josh D’Amaro brought along Disney Animation’s Jennifer Lee, Pixar’s Pete Docter, Lucasfilm’s Dave Filoni, and Marvel’s Kevin Feige to announce a series of new skin packs for the game, coming throughout the rest of the year.
This fall, there are skins based on Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone from the The Incredibles Movies, as well as a trio of Disney villains – Maleficent, Captain Hook and Cruella de Vil – will come into play, but next week three new star Wars Article inspired by The MandalorianSeason Three: Skins of Moff Gideon and IG-12 and an animated backpack bling of Grogu in a bag.
But perhaps the biggest announcement came from Marvel: FortniteThe next season of is all about Marvel. The story, titled “Absolute Doom,” kicks off on August 16th and centers on Doctor Doom, who comes to the game’s island to wreak havoc with the power of Pandora’s Box, leading to a group of Marvel friends and enemies—including Black Panther‘s Shuri, Cyclops, Colossus, Jubilee, Gwenpool, Emma Frost, Mysterio and more – as well as Marvel mashups of Fortnite Characters who join forces to stop him.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that Disney’s efforts with its $1.5 billion stake in Epic are starting out rather tentatively. After all, the deal announced in February mentioned an “entirely new gaming universe” that might take place within Fortnite similar to the game’s recently added Lego and Rocket Racing modes, and will take some time to develop. Docter, Filoni and Lee all mentioned that things beyond Fortnite Skins were in the works (including a new Mandalorian-Themed ride variant for Galaxy’s Edge’s Smuggler run ride, built with Epic’s Unreal Engine). So expect more crossovers like this for now until we really start to see the power of a fully armed and operational Disney and Epic collaboration.
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