Thanos, the big galaxy-threatening bad from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and main villain in Avengers: Infinity War, is coming to the record-breaking video game Fortnite, alongside his signature weapon, the Infinity Gauntlet.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Epic Games and Marvel’s new crossover event will commence on Tuesday, May 8 in Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode for a limited amount of time. While the reasoning for this crossover could be semi-logically explained by arguing that Thanos can enter all kinds of realities via his Reality Stone, the more obvious answer is that this is a brilliant business move on behalf of both entities here.
Both Marvel and Fortnite are breaking records in their respective fields, and it seems that both of these behemoths are keen on actually sharing each other’s fan bases. The “Infinity Gauntlet Limited Time Mashup” mode in Battle Royale mode will essentially be the free-for-all you know and love, but it’ll have the eponymous weapon pop up somewhere on the map with all 100 players scrambling to reach it and turn into Thanos once they do.
For directors Joe and Anthony Russo—who directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Infinity War—this is genuinely a big, exciting deal. “Over the past few months, while we were editing Infinity War, we’d take breaks to hop on and get in a few games,” said Joe Russo. “And then we started thinking, how cool would it be to have some kind of Avengers-Fortnite mashup? So we stalked Donald [Mustard, Epic Games’ worldwide creative director].”
“Out of the blue, I get this call from Joe,” said Mustard. “And after a bit of geeking out over each other’s work, we start brainstorming these crazy ideas. It was really important that whatever we did, it had to be super authentic to both Fortnite and the Avengers: Infinity War, and something that fans of both would be excited about. About an hour later, we had the bones of this awesome idea for a limited time gameplay mode, and almost immediately our team got started.”
As for the latest, record-breaking Marvel film, Mustard was absolutely stunned by the effort and imagination on screen. “Infinity War blew us away, and the Russos, Kevin Feige, and the whole team at Marvel have been incredible to work with,” he said. “This kind of opportunity, where you have this mutual respect for someone’s work and you’re on the same page about doing something cool for fans, is rare and really exciting. We hope players love it.”
For those of you excited about this fusion of comic books and video games, fortunately, you won’t have to wait too long—or try too hard to experience it, as Fortnite is available for the PS4, Xbox, PC, Mac and iOS platforms.
Meanwhile, Infinity War just passed $1 billion in record time, shattering The Force Awakens' record.
