It’s not as uncommon nowadays for a movie to get a sequel decades later. Take 2010’s Tron: Legacy. That movie arrived 28 years after the original Tron movie was released, and the plan was for another sequel to follow after Legacy. However, due to Legacy’s mixed critical reception and underwhelming box office performance, Tron 3 was put on the back burner and now essentially rests in development hell. Nevertheless, Legacy producer Justin Springer is hopeful that Tron 3 will one day actually be made. As he put it:
Look, I will never stop being interested in making a TRON movie. I love the opportunity to do it. It’s a title that never really goes away internally. There’s always people around the company who like it a whole lot. And so, we’ll see what happens. It would be great to get the opportunity to do it again. It’s interesting – what I will say is that I think it continues to be relevant both in its ideas and also just the visual iconography of it. I think people are still are interested in it and it still feels contemporary to me. So it’s just about finding the right time, right script, and the right people at the studio saying ‘yes.’ You know, just the usual.
While Justin Springer’s comments don’t provide any renewed hope that Disney will want to move forward with Tron 3, it’s still good to hear he’s interested in keeping the franchise going. While 1982’s Tron was certainly a visual triumph for its time, Tron: Legacy kicked up several levels with its impressive effects and production design, making it look like a proper Hollywood blockbuster. Alas, who knows if we’ll ever return to the digital realm, although Ehren Kruger, who co-produced Dumbo with Springer, stated during the Slashfilm interview that all Springer needs is for the fans to demand it, “just like last time.” That might not carry the same weight it did a decade ago, but enthusiasm from the fanbase certainly doesn’t hurt.
Tron: Legacy certainly set the stage for Tron 3, mainly with Olivia Wilde’s Quorra, the sole surviving ISO (isomorphic algorithm) from The Grid, being brought back to the real world with Garrett Hedlund’s Sam Flynn, who was planning to take back his father’s company, ENCOM. We were also treated to a minor appearance from Cillian Murphy as Edward Dillinger Jr., whose father was the villain from the first Tron movie, so perhaps Jr. would have followed in those sinister footsteps.
For now though, there’s still no movement on Tron 3, and when asked last year why this threequel never happened, Garrett Hedlund attributed it to Disney getting cold feet following the disappointing performance of 2014’s Tomorrowland. In fact, the Tron franchise as a whole seems to be dormant. Two years after Tron: Legacy came out, the prequel TV series Tron: Uprising aired on Disney XD, but that only lasted a season. In 2017, it was reported that Disney was considering making a Tron reboot instead starring Jared Leto, but that project hasn’t had any traction either. Still, there is a Tron rollercoaster at Shanghai Disneyland and another one is being constructed for Disney World, so the franchise will at least still be somewhat in the public consciousness.
Rest assured, if there’s any news about another Tron movie, we here at CinemaBlend will let you know about it. For now, take a look at what movies are coming out later this year in our 2019 release schedule.
