Greta Lee, Jared Leto and Arturo Castro in “TRON: Ares.”
Disney/Leah Gallo
Now that Disney has rebooted its TRON franchise with TRON: Ares, starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Evan Peters, is another TRON sequel a guarantee?
The franchise, of course, began in 1982 with the release of the original TRON, starring Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, both of whom returned to the 2010 sequel TRON: Legacy opposite Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde. Now, 15 years later, Disney is giving the soft reboot treatment to TRON: Ares, with only Bridges returning with less than five minutes of screen time.
Note: The rest of the article discusses spoilers from TRON: Ares.
The logline for the film reads, “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated program, Ares (Leto), who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.”
In TRON: Ares, Lee and Peters play Eve Kim and Julian Dillinger, the heads of competing artificial intelligence corporations who have decidedly different goals in bringing their digital constructs to life in the real world. Eve wants to use her AI tools to create a sustainable future for the planet, while Julian aims to create military grade weapons and soldiers, the first of which he names Ares (Leto).
The big issue, however, is that once these digital constructs materialize via 3D printing, they only last 29 minutes before they crumble because neither Eve nor Julian has cracked the “permanence code,” which makes the objects permanent.
Once Eve finally discovers the code, however, Julian attempts to steal it from her to proceed with his dark plans.
TRON: Ares makes its intention for the future of the franchise in a scene during the end credits, where Julian escapes authorities by uploading himself into the Dillinger Grid in the digital world. It’s there that he discovers his grandfather Ed’s identity disc and begins to transform into the villainous character Sark.
Gillian Anderson and Evan Peters in “TRON: Ares.”
Disney/Leah Gallo
What Needs To Happen For ‘TRON: Ares’ To Get A Sequel?
Unless it’s a major franchise where more sequels or related chapters are already mapped out — think the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the new DC Universe — the likelihood of a sequel being produced for most movies is largely dependent on how the current release performs at the box office.
As such, TRON: Ares can aspire to more TRON adventures on the big screen, but the one big determining factor is how much money the film makes and whether Disney can justify producing another expensive production.
Tron: Ares had a net production budget of about $180 million before prints and advertising costs, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That is about the same amount of money Disney reportedly spent on its MCU films Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*, and $20 million less than the studio spent on The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
However, Tron: Ares’ opening weekend gross of $33.5 million from 4,000 North American theaters is much weaker than the bows of each of those MCU films. According to Deadline, the film also had an international take of $27 million, which boosted the film’s global take to $60.5 million in its first Friday to Sunday fame.
Prior to the film’s release on Friday, Tron: Ares was projected to earn anywhere between $40 million and $45 million domestically, and $80 million and $90 million worldwide from Friday to Sunday, Deadline noted.
In a business where the financial bottom line rules, TRON: Ares is going to need to grow some serious legs at the box office before a fourth TRON movie is even considered — and given the sales at ticket counters worldwide over the weekend, things are not looking good.
Perhaps the most realistic observation about a potential sequel came from Evan Peters, who, given his end credits appearance, puts him the first in line to star in a TRON 4 should it ever be produced.
In an apparent nod to the decade and a half between the releases of TRON: Legacy and TRON: Ares, Peters recently discussed with Collider his hopes of reprising his character.
“Well, we’ll see,” Peters told Collider. “We’ll see in 20 years if that pans out. But it was incredibly cool to be inside the Grid, and in the creation, but it was surreal.”
Directed by Joachim Rønning and also starring Gillian Anderson, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro and Hasan Minhaj, TRON: Ares is new in theaters.