[chr-s]

Disney use Unreal Engine for their dynamic greenscreen LED wall which they film The Mandalorian and others against. That's got to be at least as important as Fortnite characters.

[btown]

I'm almost certain that the Unity licensing debacle caused a number of Disney department heads to say "we need to make sure this doesn't sneak up on us on the Unreal side for our cinematic production pipeline." Whether or not this deal was already in the works, it certainly didn't hurt it.

[bhouston]

That was true many years ago (that ILM used UE for the LED wall) but they switched out UE for a dedicated software tool by the second season of Mandalorian, called Helios.

Details here and elsewhere: https://www.engadget.com/the-mandalorian-season-two-stagecra...

[pnw]

Epic doesn't charge for use of Unreal Engine in vfx, and overall I don't think vfx is a very profitable space for most software companies. It's a low margin business, mostly outsourced. I doubt that Hollywood studios are going to pay any vfx provider a share of revenue in any case.

[set4]

This is changing:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/5/23905082/epic-unreal-engi...

[empath-nirvana]

Yeah that was my first thought. I'm sure the gaming part means something to them, but they probably think of them more as a Real Time Special Effects company.

[TheMajor]

100% this is it. Their virtual set and volume tech is unparalleled. Disney see it as the future of TV/film production.

[tracerbulletx]

Maybe but they've been wanting to get in to gaming for a while now, so this is probably mostly about that.

[bitvoid]

> get back in to gaming

FTFY. They had their own game publishing arm since 1988, Disney Interactive Studios, and owned first-party studios like Avalanche Software, which was sold off to Warner Bros.

They shut it down in 2016.

[MikusR]

Only for the first season. They switched to their own stuff later. IIRC.

[bhouston]

Correct. Details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39296621

[ryukoposting]

Yeah, I'm not sure why Disney of all companies would be so enamored by another company's entertainment IP that they'd spend $1.5B to have dibs on it. There has to be a better explanation than Fortnite skins.

[krapp]

Fortnite skins are probably worth more than Star Wars as a property at the moment. At least, worth far more than $1.5b.

[maxglute]

One would assume Pixar has enough talent to write something proprietary for Disney that integrates more of their VFX tech that UE can't do.