Few years ago, casinos were regularly at the centre of some epic scenes in movies—with the likes of Ocean’s Eleven, Goodfellas, The Hangover, Casino Royale and Rain Man all featuring an important casino scene. However, as the year 2010 began, the ‘casino element’ appeared to be missing from major cinematic release, as several years went by without a trace of a single casino suspense filled movie.

Nonetheless, casinos have suddenly made a big comeback into some of the major releases of the last few years, and somewhat surprisingly, Disney franchises appear to be featuring the most casino scenes. Media giants Disney owns Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm, which ensures that they control the biggest titles in modern cinema—from the rebooted Star Wars saga to the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit the box office towards the end of 2017, welcomed by mixed reviews from various critics. They raved particularly about director Rian Johnson’s version of Star Wars along the main storyline, while majority of the fans disliked the movie entirely.

This caused a revolt as many fans chose to sit out the following Solo movie, signalling difficult times for the franchise.

However, a few months later, Disney hit jackpot in with the success of Marvel’s Black Panther. The Wakanda superhero lit the cinemas up with its African inspired theme and brought in numerous new allegiances to the Marvel franchise.

Irrespective of how different the reception of both movies was by fans as well as their quite dissimilar universes, they both featured casino scenes that were very crucial to the plot and character development.

The move by Disney came as surprise as they tend to disassociate themselves from anything that may be considered a ‘bad image’. For example, when Disney bought over Marvel Entertainment, they put an immediate halt to the widely popular online progressive jackpot, Marvel slot game suite—as they didn’t want the brand associated with gambling,

Despite this, players continued to win big at casino games, with a player at Mega Casino—operated by Prime Gaming on the SkillOnNet platform—winning a £1.5m jackpot playing a video slot game.

The UK-based gambler was playing £3 per bet from his mobile device when he won a jackpot on his 454th spin, making him an instant millionaire.

“Mega Casino is all about offering players the broadest selection of casino jackpot games with the largest prizes, and we are always delighted to see our players win big,” said Danny Hills from Mega Casino in a report.

“This particular player was new to the site, and in a very short space of time has landed a life-changing, jackpot win, which is absolutely mega. This is exactly the sort of news we like to hear about and share with our players.”

Furthermore, movie-based games at online casinos have since been placed amongst the most-played games. Players often use their bonuses to play movie-themed games such as Jurassic World, Jurassic Park, Highlander, Basic Instinct and Paranormal Activity—largely due to the familiarity of these titles.

Players feel suspense and oftentimes ecstasy, while playing online casino games, and that excitement is heightened when the play is done alongside some of their favourite movie characters—like the two new famous casino scenes in Canto Bight and Busan, Korea Republic.

Also, while fans of Star Wars ridiculed the casino scene of The Last Jedi as being a “side-quest for two characters that were no-longer important that ended in ridiculousness,” the Black Panther scene was able to build further on the main character, T’Challa as a suave, before bursting into a thrilling fighting scene.

As casino scenes in movies begin to rise, with Disney leading the way, it is expected that other major movies will likely follow suit in returning casinos back to the helm of the cinematic world.