Epic's $1.5 billion Disney shooter goes "AI first"

The pivot concerns a collaboration announced in early 2024, when Epic and Disney set out a $1.5 billion project that was supposed to put a Marvel- and Star Wars-themed shooter in players' hands in March 2027. According to Bloomberg, the delay is indefinite, and the sources point to two pressures arriving at once: the AI-related shakeup and development that has been understaffed and slower than expected.

What distinguishes this shift is where the models sit in the process. Rather than assisting at the edges, they are set to produce the code and guide the art, with human developers managing and guiding those outputs — described in the internal messages as "no more hand-written code" and art assets "generated with full AI workflows." The same people are recast as the ones steering the model's work rather than producing it directly.

Bloomberg's sourcing is unnamed people familiar with the project, so the internal picture rests on that reporting; an Epic spokesperson framed the change as AI-accelerated development led by Epic developers, and the company's public message was one of moving people around to retool. How the retooling lands on a project now without a release date is likely to be read as a signal for other large licensed titles weighing the same trade-off.