Some senior Disney executives want to buy Epic Games outright — a company in which The Walt Disney Company already holds a $1.5 billion equity stake dating to February 2024, according to tech journalist Alex Heath.

Heath, a former deputy editor at The Verge, discussed Epic's trajectory on "The Town with Matt Belloni" podcast this week. Host Matt Belloni said he had heard Disney might want to buy Epic at some point; Heath confirmed internal interest and a divided executive rank.

"I know for a fact there are senior executives in Disney who want them to buy Epic and are just waiting for that moment," Heath said. "And then there's others who think it's a bad idea."

What would Disney actually buy?

• Unreal Engine. Epic's real-time renderer has become a standard production tool for episodic film and TV, including seasons of Disney+'s The Mandalorian.
• Open-world Disney IP. Epic and Disney are already building a persistent "games and entertainment universe" on Fortnite; full ownership would let Disney set the IP mix without ongoing negotiation.
• Theme-park reach. Heath pointed to a hypothetical Fortnite-themed Disney park as one of the clearer use cases for a captive engine and entertainment franchise.
• Disney+ as interaction hub. Belloni described Epic as a "lynchpin of the entire interactivity of Disney+," where the streamer would handle shopping, gaming and social functions built around existing franchise IP.

Who decides a sale?

Tim Sweeney. Epic remains a founder-controlled private company, and the chief executive retains full voting stock.

"At the same time," Heath said, "you have to understand Epic is a founder-controlled company so Tim Sweeney, the founder, has full voting stock control and can make unilateral decisions and it's really up to him."

Where does the new CEO sit?

Josh D'Amaro, Disney's new CEO, started the role earlier this month after Bob Iger's departure. Belloni claimed D'Amaro wasn't supportive of Disney's separate $1 billion deal with OpenAI, which collapsed last week. The same executive, Belloni said, "was 500% behind this Epic Games relationship that Disney has where they are developing an open world experience within Fortnite."

Why does Roblox define the ceiling?

The acquisition chatter lands a week after Epic confirmed it is laying off more than 1,000 employees. Heath attributes the cuts to pandemic-era overhiring and the absence of public-company discipline, comparing the company's position unfavourably with Roblox's creator-economy traction — a comparison Belloni endorsed with a personal anecdote about his 10-year-old.

"I've got a 10-year-old," Belloni said. "He's hanging out in Fortnite with his buddies… and he would be stoked if all of a sudden Tony Stark showed up, and Yoda and a bunch of Jedi and they could play with those."

What signals come next?

The next concrete data points are Disney's quarterly filing — where the $1.5 billion Epic investment should now appear — and any post-layoff financial update from Epic. A takeover remains contingent on Sweeney relinquishing voting control, the constraint that today keeps a Disney bid in wait-and-see mode rather than on the table.