‘Originally it was like, no, we are not interested’: It apparently took 5.5 hours of hardcore pitching to get Thanos in Fortnite—and as you know, the rest is history
It might be hard to imagine in our Fortnite-ified era of shooters, but Fortnite, once upon a time, didn’t have a single crossover to its name. The battle royale, added to the game in 2017, was once free of twerking Thani (is that the plural?), famous pop stars, and Peter Griffin. What’s more, there was even a vision of Fortnite without Goku getting wrecked by Rick Sanchez wielding a lightsaber, or uncomfortable AI Darth Vaders saying slurs.
Per a roundup from The Game Business live, our current Thanos-based future wasn’t… inevitable. As a matter of fact, it was apparently a really hard sell. The president of interactive technology at AGBO—Joe and Anthony Russo (of Marvel fame)’s production company—Pete Wanat shares a story relayed to him by coworker Donald Mustard, who was Epic’s chief creative officer at the time.
“It was Joe and Anthony who got together with Donald and convinced him to put those types of characters inside of Fortnite,” Wanat claims. “Originally it was like, no, we are not interested in putting outside characters into Fortnite. And Joe and Anthony got together and had a phone call with Donald.”
Not only was Mustard resistant to the idea at first, it took almost an entire 9-5 work shift to get Epic Games on board. “It was supposed to be a half hour call, but five and half hours later, they were still talking about it. And Donald basically changed his mind.”
I’ve never wanted to be wire-tapped into a phone call more than that one. Mostly to see how, logistically, anyone can talk about Thanos for 5.5 hours. But also to bear witness to what may be the most pivotal phone conversation in live service gaming. Mustard continues: “He said, ‘hey, you know what, we’re going to do this’. And after that, the world exploded about what kind of integrations you could have between film and TV and games.”
Thanos, who entered the battle royale’s fourth season in 2018 as a limited-time event, was the first blockbuster media crossover with Fortnite—but as you well know, he wouldn’t be the last. He’d soon be chased by the NFL, Wreck-it-Ralph, John Wick and then, well. You know the rest.
To think, if the Russos had simply been sick on that fateful day, we could be living in a world where Palpatine’s return was actually shown in The Rise of Skywalker rather than a baffling Fortnite-exclusive event.
Instead, it’s basically kismet that every live service shooter’ll get a crossover at some point—it is now simply the way that things are done. Enjoy your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in your Call of Duty, because there’s nothing more radical than modern military warfare: Cowabunga!
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