CARY – Mark Hamill, AKA Luke Skywalker, will be touting a light saber in Epic Games’ Fortnite as the countdown to the latest Star Wars films nears launch day on Thursday.

“Christmas wish in 3, 2, 1… Wait until you see what @Ninja and I have planned with @FortniteGame and @Xbox on Thursday. It’s going to be….Amazing! (and I’ll try not to make a fool of myself),” Hamill tweeted on Monday.

@Ninja refers to Richard Tyler Blevins, who is a force himself when it comes to gaming. The “professional gamer, and Internet personality. His Twitch profile, now retired of streaming, is the most followed, with over 14 million followers,” notes Wikipedia.

They’re teasing Disney’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” which Cary-based Epic has been touting with a Fortnite-Star Waries series of events over the past month. The Hamill video is from Microsoft but the link to Fortnite is clear.

In the most recent direct tie-in, Fortnite touted:

“Drop-in now to explore the crashed TIE Fighters, take on some Stormtroopers to get their Blasters or grab the all-new Lightsaber weapon and duel your opponents” via #FortniteXStarWars.

There’s even been an exclusive trailer for the movie. (You can watch it at this link.)

And of course there are Skywalker-related “skins” that Fortnite players can purchase.

Epic’s Tim Sweeney (David) is pushing Google (Goliath) to give up app-store fees

Epic’s Star Wars play is similar to others made with Disney for superheroes from the Marvel universe.

Fortnite brings to the Disney empire a couple hundred million players and delivers a forum in which millions of players are in action simultaneously. In two years the game has turned privately held Epic into a company worth billions of dollars, according to Bloomberg news. And its CEO as well as cofounder Tim Sweeney is now a billionaire.

Yes, you could say, the Force must be with Sweeney.

And the Fortnite crossovers have created a lot of social media buzz such as this: