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Unless you’ve been living in a communications black hole for the past decade, you’ll know that the forthcoming Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of Marvel’s strategic 10-year comic-book movie masterplan, bringing together the whole stable of superheroes for a blockbuster to bust all blocks. The movie itself is about another masterplan: bad guy Thanos is trying to acquire the all-powerful “Infinity Stones”. If he gets them all, and puts them in his shiny fancy-dress glove – sorry, “Infinity Gauntlet” – he can “wipe out half the universe” with a snap of his fingers.

But we can’t ignore the fact that there’s a third masterplan behind all of this. Thanos’s quest mirrors another, less fanciful mission to acquire powerful assets – that of Marvel’s parent company, Disney. For “infinity stones” read “entertainment brands”. Disney bought Marvel in 2009 for $4bn. In 2006 it also bought its animation rival Pixar, for $7.4bn. In 2013, Disney acquired Lucasfilm, owners of Star Wars, for another $4bn. Now it is in the latter stages of a $52bn takeover of rival studio 21st Century Fox, whose properties include most of the Marvel superheroes it didn’t have the rights to already, such as the X-Men, Deadpool and Fantastic Four, plus assorted brands from Alien to Avatar to The Simpsons.

So basically, Disney is Thanos, and well on the way to controlling half the movie universe. And while we cheer the Avengers’ noble stand against galactic hegemony on the screen, they’re really on the side of Disney’s corporate hegemony in real life. In 2016, it controlled about a quarter of it: it was behind the year’s five highest grossing movies worldwide, and made a record-breaking $7bn (it only managed the top two movies last year, and four out of the top 10). In recent history, the big six Hollywood studios have held roughly equal sway but if the Fox takeover goes ahead, it will have an estimated 39% market share. And it’s not just the movies. Frozen made $1bn at the box office, but Frozen merchandising made even more. The theme park business, which earns twice as much as the movies do, is expanding hugely – they’re even building a Star Wars-themed hotel. Disney is reportedly planning its own Netflix-style streaming service, which could mean you won’t be able to see its content anywhere else.

As a result, looking at Disney’s schedule, we can practically predict the top movies for the rest of the decade: Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers sequel, Han Solo movie, The Incredibles 2, Star Wars Episode IX, Frozen 2, reboots of Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, Mulan, Aladdin, Dumbo, more Marvel movies, and so on. You could call it the Infinity Slate. Where does it end? When the entire entertainment universe is in Disney’s gauntlet? Do the other studios now have to band together to form a rebel alliance? Will franchise fatigue bring the whole magic kingdom crashing down? Unless you boycott movies, your weapons are useless against it.

Then again, a Star Wars-themed hotel … pretty cool, huh?

Avengers: Infinity War is in cinemas on 26 April