Disney X Fortnite Is Still Taking place, Despite Massive Cuts At Epic

Despite the huge current layoffs at Epic Video games, Disney says it hasn’t deserted its plans to construct a universe inside Fortnite. Epic remains to be absolutely on board, too–even although it simply laid off the artist who created lots of the authentic characters for its most profitable recreation.

“We’re dedicated to constructing a video games and leisure universe with Disney,” Epic Video games president Adam Sussman instructed TheWrap right this moment. “The imaginative and prescient is unchanged, and we’re excited by our progress.”

Star Wars and Marvel characters have already appeared within the recreation, and it seems that the following Disney/Fortnite crossover will see characters from Disney’s animated 1997 basic, Hercules, showing in-game. However Disney’s received larger plans than character skins.

“We’re reaching customers in modern new ways–such as working with Epic Video games to convey collectively Disney’s beloved manufacturers and franchises with the massively common Fortnite in a transformational new video games and leisure universe,” Disney mentioned in 2024, shortly after saying it had invested $1.5 billion into Fortnite.

By 2025, it was teasing a Disney X Fortnite mode, and by 2026, new Disney CEO Josh D’Amoro was hinting that some future Disney films could ultimately premiere in Fortnite.

“It is not simply gonna be one character. It might be a brand new movie premiering there, it might be the place that you just resolve to e book your subsequent cruise trip. You can take part within the Tremendous Bowl not directly there,” D’Amaro mentioned final month.

Though Disney hasn’t publicly commented on Epic’s current layoffs–which noticed roughly 1,000 staff displaced–the firm nonetheless appears to have loads of religion in its partnership with Epic, regardless that Epic has admitted the layoffs had been a results of a decline in participant engagement and Epic “spending considerably greater than we’re making,” in line with Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. The layoffs are half of a bigger monetary shakedown that features over $500 million in cuts throughout advertising, contractor place, and unfilled roles.

“Despite Fortnite remaining one of the profitable video games on this planet, we have had challenges delivering constant Fortnite magic with each season,” Sweeney mentioned in a current memo to staff. “We’re solely within the early levels of returning to cell and optimizing Fortnite for the world’s billions of smartphones; and in being the trade’s vanguard we now have taken a number of bullets in a battle which is barely within the early days of paying off for ourselves and all builders.”