Disney in crisis: OpenAI shuts down Sora, while the metaverse project with Epic stalls

Disney in Crisis: OpenAI Shuts Down Sora, Metaverse with Epic Games Stalls

Josh D'Amaro's first week as Disney's CEO has brought two crises at once. OpenAI is winding down its Sora image generation program — just months after Disney signed a billion-dollar deal to integrate it into Disney+. And the metaverse that Disney was supposed to build jointly with Epic Games is sinking into complete silence amid massive layoffs at the Fortnite studio.

In early 2025, Disney announced a $1 billion partnership with OpenAI. The plan looked ambitious: Sora's technologies — generative video and images — were supposed to seamlessly integrate into the Disney+ ecosystem. This was positioned as a breakthrough: personalized content, interactive experiences, new formats for subscribers of the world's largest streaming service. However, almost immediately after the announcement, it became clear that Sora was performing unstably. Industry observers criticized the generation quality and called the partnership an example of "AI slop" — content produced by AI without artistic value. Now OpenAI is shutting down the program entirely. There are no official explanations yet, but Disney finds itself in an awkward position: money spent, technology disappeared.

Parallel to this, another story is unfolding. In February 2024, Disney signed a $1.5 billion deal with Epic Games, creators of Fortnite, to build a metaverse based on the Unreal Engine.

The concept involved creating interactive worlds within Fortnite: spaces inspired by Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney's classic cartoons. The announcement was accompanied by grandiose rhetoric about the "next chapter in entertainment history." But in April 2025, Epic Games announced the layoff of about 1,000 employees.

For the company, this is not the first wave of cuts: a year ago, Epic let go of 16% of its workforce. Now teams working on ambitious non-gaming projects are being reduced, and the Disney metaverse topic has completely disappeared from the public agenda. No joint announcements, no updates on timelines, no roadmap — just silence.

Disney, of course, retains options. Generative AI in Disney+ is quite feasible with other technology partners or through its own R&D divisions. The metaverse with Epic has not been formally canceled — the deal has not been terminated.

But the media and investment context has changed drastically: two of the company's key technology bets are now in question simultaneously. This is a telling story about the risks of publicly announcing major technology investments before their actual implementation. $1 billion on Sora and $1.

5 billion on the metaverse — a combined $2.5 billion — is more than just a line in a press release. For a new CEO, these are reputational commitments that now urgently need honest explanation or a restart.