Just in time for the 41st anniversary, Disney claims that TRON is back from the Grid. The Hollywood Reporter broke the story that Jared Leto will star in TRON: Ares with a script by Jesse Wigutow. Joachim RØnning is “in talks” to direct, after co-directing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil for the Mouse. He’s good at sequels.
After the 2010 TRON: Legacy didn’t perform as expected at the box office, Disney officially scrapped director Joseph Kosinksi’s planned third film in 2015. At the time, Kosinski seemed sanguine about it, as plans for Star Wars and Marvel left little room for the groundbreaking franchise. Once the studio acquired Fox, bringing Avatar into the fold, it seemed even less likely that a third TRON would happen. Most recently, Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick so he seems to have done okay for himself.
With Leto in the lead, it’s unclear how directly Ares would follow Legacy. For Legacy, Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner reprised their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley from the original 1982 TRON. Legacy focused on Garrett Hedlund playing Bridges’ son Sam, searching for his long-lost father who had retreated to the virtual world of the Grid. Cillian Murphy had a “blink and you’ll miss it” role as the son of David Warner’s character Dillon. At the time, it was assumed that he would become more important in Kosinski’s version of TRON 3. And then — 12 year old spoiler alert — Olivia Wilde’s self-aware “isomorphic algorithm” character Quorra ended up in the real world, riding off into the sunset with Hedlund. What would happen if a program walked among us?
We might not find out. If the current plan to release TRON: Ares in 2025 works out, 15 years passed. Neither Wilde nor Hedlund are ingenues anymore and again, Leto is the star and only cast member announced so far. Having just completed his role as (allegedly) the Hat-Box Ghost in this year’s Haunted Mansion, Disney likes working with him. Unless he’s replacing Hedlund outright, Ares might just leave the threads of Legacy unwoven.
Not a whiff of this came out during either Comic-Con or D23, though Boxleitner joined some of the creative team onstage in Anaheim for a TRON 40th Anniversary panel. Disney did, however, announce an upcoming TRON video game called TRON Identity. Set several generations after the events of Legacy, it’s a murder mystery where the denizens of the Grid think Flynn, Tron, and the Users (i.e. humans) are just myths. Religious zealots still revere them, but most ISOs are just trying to get along with their lives.
At the D23 Disney videogame panel, they talked about the game, but no one said a word about a film. Of course, it’s been a few months, and a lot can happen inside Disney in a matter of days. Just ask Bob Iger. There may not have been plans in September.
So we wait for the next announcement, or the opening of the TRON Lightcycle coaster at Walt Disney World.
End of Line.
