Disney may be moving towards the purchase of Epic Games, according to one industry insider who has been following the media conglomerate’s business trajectory. A potential buyout of Epic Games by Disney would not just cause a change in ownership of games like Fortnite, but of a popular computer graphics engine series used not only in games, but in television and movies.
Epic Games may be best known for Fortnite, but it’s been developing games since the early 1990s, having found success with series like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, and Infinity Blade in the years leading up to Fortnite‘s launch in 2017. Almost all of Epic’s development efforts have been focused on the Fortnite brand in recent years, with the battle royale playing host to a ton of different crossover IPs. Many of those crossovers have featured characters and themes owned by Disney, which already suggests a strong working relationship between the two companies.
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Disney Executives May Be Interested in Buying Epic Games
Now, one tech journalist who has been keeping a close eye on Disney claims that top officials at the company have been throwing around the idea of taking ownership of Epic Games. “I know for a fact there are senior executives in Disney who want them to buy Epic and are just waiting for that moment, and there’s others who think it’s a bad idea” said Alex Heath, former deputy editor at The Verge and now co-host of tech industry podcast ACCESS, while appearing on The Town with Matt Belloni. Fortnite‘s collaborations with Star Wars and other Disney-owned properties, including The Incredibles and Disney Villains, have already shown an eagerness for the two companies to work together, but having both under the same roof could open more channels for players to interact with these popular characters in-game.
The concept of Disney buying out Epic is one that isn’t just centered on the world of video gaming, as it could have heavy application to the company’s movie and television branches as well. Disney had been a billion-dollar investor behind OpenAI’s Sora, an advanced video generation platform that was announced to be shutting down its services in late March 2026. As Heath pointed out, Epic’s Unreal Engine has been “a huge part of production for everything from Mandalorian to a ton of shows,” and while it’s not exactly the same thing as an artificial intelligence that can effortlessly generate video, it’s still a very useful tool that has a lot of practical purposes in multiple spheres of media.
If Disney is planning to move towards an aqcuisition of Epic Games, its executives will have to exhibit patience. Disney already took out a $1.5 billion stake in the company in February 2025, but the majority shareholder is Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, who is also the original author of Unreal Engine, with Chinese conglomerate Tencent holding onto about 80 percent of the remaining half. Heath noted that with the majority of the shares, Sweeney still has the ability to make unilateral decisions about the company’s future, and that he seems like the type of person who wants his brand to live on long after he’s gone and has many more ideas for making that happen. Still, if Sweeney ever decides to step away from the company he founded, Heath opined that Disney “would be the most natural home for it.
In the meantime, some consumer confidence has been shaken in light of Epic Games’ recent layoffs, which saw more than 1,000 different people lose their jobs and was announced, coincidentally, on the same date as the shutdown of Sora. While these layoffs were unfortunate, Heath does not see them as a sign that the company is in trouble, saying he believes the company “overhired” during the pandemic of 2020, and making note that a pullback in staffing is an industry-wide event that is clearly not self-contained to Epic since the world has opened up again. While Belloni questioned whether picking up a company that had just laid off employees would be a positive move, he also echoed Heath’s sentiments regarding Disney’s interest in acquiring Epic, noting new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro mentioned Epic in his recent shareholder address.
