The Walt Disney Company held their quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, outlining some of the future plans for the global brand in the weeks and months ahead. Among teases for Disney+ Day, as well as other information on the movies, television, and theme parks front, Disney CEO Bob Chapek dropped a pretty significant buzzword — the “metaverse.” The term has been used a lot lately with regards to building a comprehensive virtual space — most recently by Facebook, which changed its parent company name to “Meta” in an attempt to indicate a prioritization of that kind of technology.
“The Walt Disney Company has a long track record as an early adopter in the use of technology to enhance the entertainment experience,” Chapek said on Wednesday. “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”
Granted, Disney has had experience with putting its characters into virtual worlds, with characters from Marvel and Star Wars arriving in Fortnite in recent years. But given how highly-publicized Facebook’s jump into the metaverse has been — and the comparisons to the IP-fueled world of Ready Player One — the news of Disney hoping to dive into the space in the “next 100 years” definitely caught a lot of attention. Here are just a few of those reactions.
Makes Sense
i mean…. disney is one of the few companies that it makes sense to use it though. like kingdom hearts was called meta on release since it smashes several franchise properties, and then you have marvel studios, which operates on its own earth-199999 timeline https://t.co/UiN7cuS3EZ
— tsu~iiyyäåⱥ🌵 (@iskendaris) November 10, 2021
Meta Meta
FaceBook, Roblox, now Disney. I’m going to create a metaverse that connects the various metaverses. It’s the next logical step. We shall call it meta-metaverse. Currently seeking investors. DMs are open. https://t.co/S5LKwHN3Oe
— Chris Grobbel (@ChrisGrobbel) November 10, 2021
