The TRON franchise launched in 1982 and finally got a sequel in 2010 when filmmaker Joseph Kosinski stepped behind the camera for TRON: Legacy. Neither movie was a box office hit, but both gained cult followings, and fans spent years hoping for a threequel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, that was going to be Kosinski’s\u00a0TRON: Ascension, a movie that languished in development hell for years until it evolved into TRON: Ares\u00a0with a new lead star in Suicide Squad’s Jared Leto.<\/p>\n
That had little in common with what the Top Gun: Maverick and F1 director’s vision for\u00a0the franchise, and he broke his silence on TRON: Ares in a recent\u00a0interview with Empire<\/a>\u00a0(via SFFGazette.com<\/a>). As a reminder, the\u00a0Joachim R\u00f8nning-helmed movie has 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed only\u00a0$142.2 million at the worldwide box office, making it a flop.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I don\u2019t really see it as a sequel,” Kosinski said. “This definitely used elements of a movie I worked on, called ‘Tron: Ascension,’ in terms of maybe some of the set-pieces and visuals, but it really inverted the story and told it from a completely different point of view.”<\/p>\n “So I see it more like a parallel story as opposed to a sequel. But I\u2019m thrilled that what Steve Lisberger created in 1982 still resonates today.”<\/p>\n TRON: Ares referenced characters and events from TRON: Legacy and ended by teasing the return of\u00a0Sam and\u00a0Quorra. It’s interesting then that\u00a0Kosinski\u00a0views the movie as a separate entity, though perhaps not overly surprising given that his own threequel plans never came to fruition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Reflecting on making the 2010 movie, the filmmaker said, “I now realise how lucky I was that Disney gave me the freedom on that film. I don\u2019t know if that would happen today. They wanted me to go for it, hiring Daft Punk and a bunch of actors that hadn\u2019t really done big films before, and the whole crew was very green.”<\/p>\n “It was my first time on a film set. But in some ways, I think what makes the film so unique is that we didn\u2019t know what the rules were. We just did it.”<\/p>\n For many\u00a0TRON\u00a0fans, the hope was that\u00a0Ares\u00a0would be successful enough to bring them the long-awaited follow-up to\u00a0Legacy. Instead,\u00a0TRON:\u00a0Ascension\u00a0will likely go down as one of those potentially great unmade movies.\u00a0<\/p>\n In October, a report delved into where things went wrong for TRON: Ares. “There was no specific vision, to be honest,” one insider said. “The idea that Disney would spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a Jared Leto film that is a franchise that hasn\u2019t worked in four decades is insane.”<\/p>\n Still, despite a lack of box office success, Disney might have had other reasons for making another\u00a0TRON\u00a0movie. It was said that,\u00a0“those close to the project believe that ultimately Tron: Ares was an advertisement for the Disney theme park rides (which was also one of the catalysts as to why Tron: Ares was made).”<\/p>\n TRON: Ares is now available on Digital and powers onto 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and DVD beginning January 6, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The TRON franchise launched in 1982 and finally got a sequel in 2010 when filmmaker Joseph Kosinski stepped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,40573,337,4937,61975],"class_list":{"0":"post-350195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-joseph-kosinski","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-tron-ares","14":"tag-tron-legacy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}