Tron Returns! Jared Leto to star in sci-fi sequel Tron: Ares

Jared Leto is finally set to star in the Tron sequel that he’s been developing for years, and the movie now has a title – Tron: Ares.

Jared Leto is a huge Tron fan, and via interviews and social media, he’s been promising fans a new movie in the franchise, one where he’d play a character called Ares.

The first Tron hit screens in 1982, with a synopsis as follows: “When a brilliant video game maker hacks the mainframe of his ex-employer, he is beamed inside an astonishing digital world and becomes part of the very game he is designing.”

But while Tron’s computer-generated special effects were groundbreaking, the film wasn’t the blockbuster hit that Disney was expecting.

A second movie eventually made it to the big screen in 2010, but while Tron: Legacy was a modest hit, and a sequel was initially green-lit, that third Tron movie never happened. Until now.

Jared Leto to star in Tron: Ares

According to The Wrap, “Disney is in early negotiations to set Joachim Rønning to direct Jared Leto in Tron: Ares. The film is crewing up, eyeing an August start date in Vancouver.”

Leto recently wrapped Haunted Mansion for the Mouse House, making this a Disney double for the actor.

Rønning has previously directed Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales for Disney, while he’s just helmed Young Woman and the Sea for the studio, which stars Daisy Ridley as the first woman to swim the English Channel.

The Tron: Ares script has been written by Jesse Wigutow, whose credits include It Runs in the Family, The Prince, and the long-gestating reboot of The Crow that keeps getting cancelled.

Tron: Ares will be a direct sequel to Tron: Legacy, which starred Jeff Bridges, Garret Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, and Michael Sheen, and teased a follow-up to feature Cillian Murphy. There’s no word about any of their involvement at this early stage however.

The original Tron turned 40 last year, which we celebrated by pulling together a bunch of fun facts about the movie.