Disney is looking to take us back inside the world of a computer. However, it won’t be a direct follow-up to 2010’s TRON: Legacy. Instead, the Hollywood Reporter is stating that the studio is looking to reboot the franchise and that Academy Award winner Jared Leto is interested in heading up the cast.
According to the Reporter –
Sources say this new project is not a direct sequel and is being built out of the source code of the deleted Tron 3 script. Leto would play a character named Ares, who has not appeared on screen before but was a key player in that script.
The Reporter states that there is no writer or director attached, so it is unknown if TRON: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski will be back for this film. However, the TRON 3 script that the Reporter references appears to be the one that the director was developing as a sequel to the 2010 film. That film came close to going into production a few times, most recently in 2015. The film was shut done in May that year, a few months shy of an expected fall start date.
We know that the screenplay that Kosinski was developing would in part follow Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a computer program who manages to escape from the cyber realm into our world. He hinted that the third act of the film would be about an invasion from the computer world into ours. I suppose that idea could be restructured to work independently of the two preceding TRON films, though such a move will probably upset some fans. Given this story synopsis, I think it is a safe assumption to say that a character like Ares, named after the Greek god of war, will probably be a bad guy in this film.
The science-fiction franchise kicked off in 1982 when writer/director Steven Lisberger transported Jeff Bridges and movie audiences into a world inside a computer where programs took on a life of their own. Although not a hit for the studio, it earned a cult audience over the decades to the point that the studio decided to return to the concept in for 2010’s TRON: Legacy. That film too only met with mixed critical reaction, but did over $400 million at the worldwide box office from a $170 million budget.
