On Saturday night–and also an interminable half an hour late, maybe because of too many musical numbers–Disney revealed the first phase of its 1.5 billion dollar collaboration with Epic. What was all that money and waiting for? So far, another Fortnite Marvel season and some skins.
At the D23 Disney fan expo’s Fortnite event, which took place live and also in the game, various Disney people announced various Disney things. The next Fortnite season, starting August 16, will be Doctor Doom-themed, a callback to 2020’s first Marvel season. Disney villains will also be coming to Fortnite in the fall, as well as Pixar characters, in the form of The Incredibles. And there’ll also be Mandalorian characters, including a Grogu back bling you can get today.
According to Variety, 1.2 million concurrent players watched the event inside Fortnite, which pales in comparison to previous events like the Travis Scott concert (12.3 million) or the first Marvel season’s Galactus finale (15.3). This isn’t necessarily an indictment–actually playing the game is far more interesting than watching some corporate guys announce some things–but I think it does speak to what a dud the event felt like.
No shade if you’re excited for Disney characters, but the fact that all this hype and money was building toward licensed skins, something Fortnite already has in droves, felt disappointing. As several people on stage said, this is only the beginning of the Disney/Epic partnership–there’s rumors about a dedicated Disney store coming to Fortnite, which is still just skins but at least in a slightly different format–so we’re likely to see more robust offerings in the future.
But none of this felt very creative, or new, or special. As Chris Franklin said on Bluesky, “How do you unite Star Wars, Marvel, Princesses, Pixar, Theme Parks, etc under one banner in the context of Fortnite? I'm really curious what their vision is. And this was...This was announcing Mr. Incredible is going to be able to shotgun you and then dance to Gangnam Style.”
Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige maybe inadvertently hit the nail on the head in his portion of the event:
A lot of people learn about our characters for the first time–Thanos, Galactus–through Fortnite, so we get a chance that everybody can learn about our heroes and our villains for the first time, and that inspires them to then go look at our comics, go on Disney Plus, go to our movies. So this new collaboration is really remarkable: games have become an extension of our storytelling, and I can’t wait for everybody to see what we have in store in the future with this amazing collaboration.
So: marketing, basically, getting people sucked into the Disney universe and shelling out money for its movies and streaming service, which are laying off employees and churning out content, as Disney does. But it also feels petty to say this whole thing was just about marketing, because obviously that’s what it is. That’s what so much of Fortnite’s metaverse is, and what Disney’s other games are. More and more things are just IP these days, and all that IP is just about funnelling money back into shareholder and CEOs’ pockets.
Again, it feels petty to dunk on a thing for so nakedly being what it obviously is. And again, it’s likely all this will come to look different as the collaboration continues. Or at least, I hope it will: $1.5 billion for skins wouldn’t be a great use of Disney’s money. But it felt hard to watch a bunch of people try to make the very old, very standard seem new and exciting.
I’m on the record as disliking Fortnite’s crossover content, but I was hoping for something a little more interesting. The actual most interesting part of the event for me was that I caught it on the YouTube channel of some streamer I’d never heard of, who hooked the event to trying to reach 15 million subscribers. The delayed start worked in his favor, letting him drum up hype by trying to time his goal to the start of the event. He made it, too, early in the boring preliminary speeches. I’ll admit to subscribing to help him get those last numbers out, but then immediately unsubscribing. Sorry, buddy! Congrats on having a more triumphant evening than Epic and Disney.
