Tron 3 happening again with Jared Leto, Disney want Daft Punk back to score

According to a pair of new reports, Disney is plugging back into the grid and reprising development on a third Tron movie. Talks about a follow-up to 2010’s Tron: Legacy, itself a sequel to 1982’s cult classic Tron, has been buzzing for years. Made for $170 million (most of that cost coming from its cutting edge VFX used to give us the franchise’s iconic “inside a video game” look and digitally de-age Jeff Bridges) Tron: Legacy earned $400 million worldwide which meant it only made a very small profit once advertising costs were factored in. That meant that while there had been plans for another Tron film, titled Tron: Ascension, Disney was always a little iffy on it.

Back in 2017 though, Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski revealed that Tron 3 was not dead but had just been in a “cryogenic freeze” as it got retooled. Shortly thereafter, it was reported Jared Leto was attached to star in a new film titled Tron: Destiny, which was to serve as a reboot of the franchise… and then we heard nothing further again, so many assumed that Disney had pulled the plug again. But now The DisInsider is reporting that according to its sources, not only is this third film with Leto back in development again, but it’s no longer going to be a reboot but rather a straight sequel to Tron: Legacy. And I’m really, really, really happy about that.

My jubilation isn’t because I thought Tron: Legacy was that great of a film. Visually it was jaw-dropping, but it lacked badly in the writing and character department. So no, it wasn’t a great film. But it was the best f–king Daft Punk music video the world has ever seen! The legendary French electronic music duo composed the entire score for Tron: Legacy and it was a modern masterpiece… which the Academy totally snubbed without even giving it a nomination at the 2011 Oscars. AND YES, I’M STILL ANGRY ABOUT IT!

However, I did say up top that we had a pair of reports about this third Tron film and here’s where my happiness comes in. On a recent episode of the Light the Fuse podcast, Mitchell Leib, Disney’s President of Music & Soundtracks, spoke about the experience of working with Daft Punk to create that iconic score for Tron: Legacy. And here he actually confirmed that development on Tron 3 is happening and that Disney wants Daft Punk back again for the music.

We’re looking at making a ‘Tron 3. We’ve got a great script. A really phenomenal script that we’re very excited about. Whereas the timing wasn’t right to do it years ago, I think we feel the timing is right, now. We learned a lot of lessons from [‘Tron: Legacy’].

The right and first thing to do is to bring Daft Punk back and see if they want to [return]…We don’t even know who will be directing yet. We’re hopeful that Joe Kosinski will come back and do another one…A lot of things gotta fall into the right places…

As Leib stipulates at the end there, this is not a done deal yet. There are still obstacles to get around. He mentions that they want Kosinski behind the camera once again, but DisInsider’s sources claim that multiple directors are being considered with nothing confirmed yet. It’s also unclear which “great” and “phenomenal” script Leib is referring to. Reportedly, there was a completed script for the scrapped Tron: Ascension, which would have seen the digital world of The Grid invading the real world. There were also reports that the new lead of the franchise would be a character named Ares (abandoning the Flynn family storyline), but some reported that this was Leto’s character in Tron: Destiny, leaving a lot of uncertainty. Then there’s the Tron live-action series that was being developed by John Ridley to be one of the headline acts for the launch of Disney+, but which Disney eventually abandoned over cost. Could some of that story perhaps have been repurposed for a feature film?

As pertinent as all of these questions are though, there’s only two that matter to me: When can I listen to that damn new Daft Punk soundtrack and why hasn’t the Academy just given it the Oscar for Best Original Score yet?!

Last Updated: July 8, 2020