A pirate’s face melts from flesh to skull as he clutches a fistful of cursed gold. A few hundred yards away, the cockpit window of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon fills the dunes of Tatooine, then the towers of Coruscant.
Both are running on the same software that “Fortnite,” the hugely popular online video game, runs on.
Epic Games’ Unreal Engine has spent several years migrating deeper into Walt Disney Co. — from the LED soundstages where “The Mandalorian” was shot, to previsualization suites where Imagineers sketch out rides, and now into the ride vehicles themselves and a related online game within “Fortnite.”
“This is a big moment for us,” Sean Shoptaw, executive vice president of Disney Games and Digital Entertainment, told reporters at a recent media event. “We’ve spent many, many years talking about … taking an incredible experience in our park and starting to build connectivity to that inside of a really immersive game world.”
The connection between the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride and the “Smugglers Gambit” virtual game is the latest example of the growing relationship between Disney and Epic Games. In the last few years, Disney increasingly has leveraged the firm’s technology across its divisions, from theme park attractions to film and television production.
The goal is to engross fans in the world of their favorite stories, a bet Disney hopes will keep audiences engaged when there is more competition than ever for their attention.
“Disney does have incredible [intellectual property] that can be utilized or leveraged in different ways,” said Jessica Reif Ehrlich, senior media and entertainment analyst at Bank of America. “The goal here has always been to create these immersive universes, to really bring consumers in and engage with Disney characters.”
The connection between Burbank-based Disney and Epic Games has only deepened since 2024, when the Mouse House invested $1.5 billion in the Cary, N.C., game developer for an undisclosed minority stake.
The deal revolved around the creation of a Disney games and entertainment universe interoperating with “Fortnite,” which is still in progress despite layoffs at Epic Games this year. (Epic has its Los Angeles lab in El Segundo at NantStudios’ virtual production facility, which was founded by Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.)
At the time, then-Chief Executive Bob Iger billed the partnership as an opportunity to “not only meet more consumers where they are, but to allow more audiences to cultivate a bond with Disney’s iconic brands and franchises.”
The plan hasn’t seemed to change under current CEO Josh D’Amaro, who managed the Epic Games partnership in his previous role as parks chief and has emphasized the importance of technology in his new position.
He has described Disney+ as the company’s “digital centerpiece,” but recently called the Epic Games collaboration a “spoke” of that hub that gives Disney an “interactive, gaming-native environment to reach audiences that we don’t currently own, particularly younger audiences.”
A longtime facet of the collaboration is Epic’s Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D graphics technology that was initially used just for game development but has expanded for use by myriad industries, including automotive design, flight simulation for aerospace companies and media and entertainment.
The engine, which has existed for more than two decades, got an upgrade in 2021 to its current iteration, Unreal Engine 5. This latest version improved on graphics quality, meaning scenes created with it had more photorealism than before. That caught the attention of Hollywood.
“The Mandalorian” on Disney+ was an early adopter of the technology, using Unreal Engine to power virtual interactive sets displayed on massive LED walls. This type of virtual production was used to film more than half of the first season of the show, eliminating location shoots and capturing complicated visual effects.
Outside of gaming, media and entertainment is the biggest industry for Epic Games, said Bill Clifford, senior vice president of the Unreal Ecosystem.
“It’s extending your [intellectual property] into more interactive experiences,” he said. “Many studios are now building a lot of gaming content as well, so allowing them to extend their own standalone game into ‘Fortnite,’ into the theme park, into the theater is really powerful. We think it’s the future of entertainment.”
In June, Disneyland debuted a new audio-animatronic figure in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
“As much as possible, you want to create the feeling of life, that it’s alive in front of you,” said Margaret Kerrison, a former Disney Imagineer who is now an independent consultant and author of the book “The Art of Immersive Storytelling: Strategies from the Gaming World.”
“Using such technology where you can develop that emotional nuance makes it that much more believable for a guest to see and to experience.”
And that can lead to repeat visits from guests, who want to feel like they’re in a constantly changing world.
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run has used Unreal Engine since the ride’s debut in 2019 to create a dynamic landscape out of the front window of Han Solo’s famed ship. The view changes as the ship’s pilots deftly navigate worlds — or at least try to — like the metropolis of Coruscant and the deserts of Tatooine.
“Unreal Engine has become a tool we’re increasingly excited to bring into our attractions,” Asa Kalama, a creative executive with Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a statement. “It lets us build more dynamic, immersive experiences. In the cockpit of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, that now means Unreal Engine 5 delivers a more responsive, cinematic experience than ever before.”
Tying that experience to the new “Smugglers Gambit” game in “Fortnite” also can help entice players to become new visitors to the company’s theme parks, as well as keep fans engaged. The crew’s performance on the ride can translate into in-game rewards if riders’ accounts are linked.
“You might start a story in the theme park and maybe continue it in this game experience,” Epic’s Clifford said. “It just unlocks all new types of interactive, immersive, cross-media experiences for consumers that really have been nearly impossible to pull off before.”
The post How the makers of ‘Fortnite’ are putting their stamp on the Magic Kingdom appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
