Director Joseph Kosinski talks about the plot and future of TRON 3

At a special screening of TRON: Legacy hosted by the guys at Collider, director Joseph Kosinski talked about the third movie that was cancelled when Disney got cold feet over the failure of Tomorrowland (here) – which makes no sense, but however…

Ok, so at the screening Kosinski revealed details about the plot of the movie – most of which we already knew – and also confirmed that while it’s not happening, it’s not dead yet but rather just frozen by Disney for now.

“I guess I can say that TRON 3 is in cryogenic freeze. So, it’s there. It’s not dead. It’s alive, but it’s sitting there, waiting for the right time to move forward. I mean, you have to remember that when we made TRON: Legacy, Disney did not own Marvel. Disney did not own Lucasfilm…they own everything now,” said the director.

“But this was before they owned everything, so from the studio point of view, they have a certain number of slots and a certain amount of money to make movies and if you can make a Star Wars spinoff or another Marvel movie, which are all doing incredibly well, a TRON movie, even though I think it would do very well, the question is: Would it do as well as one of those? That is more the reason we haven’t seen another TRON is that Disney stock is flushed with really successful properties right now. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see one at one point.”

So Disney are too involved with Marvel and Star Wars to take a chance on TRON? That seems a little unfair as it’s an ongoing franchise with two installments already established… but what of the story?

“The movie was called, “TRON: Ascension”, I think that’s out there (it is, we reported it back in March 2015). I think we got the script to about 80%. We were in good shape. We were probably eight or nine months out, which is still a good amount of distance from being ready to shoot it, but I think the script was in good shape. What I’m excited about is the concept, which is an invasion movie from inside the machine coming out as opposed to one we’ve usually seen.

“So we hinted at that at the end of Legacy with Quorra coming out, but the idea for Ascensionwas a movie that was, the first act was in the real world, the second act was in the world of TRON, or multiple worlds of TRON, and the third act was totally in the real world. And I think that really opens up, blows open the concept of TRON in a way that would be thrilling to see on screen. But there’s also a really interesting character study in Quorra and a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” trying to figure out where she belongs having lived in the real world for a few years, and where does she fit in.”

This plot has been well known for at least a couple of years, but the reveal that it’s set in our world and the TRON world is new and it certainly feels like this could have been one well worth waiting for.

So is there any future for TRON if the movie doesn’t happen?

Well, Kosinski said the TRON legacy – no pun intended – is alive and well and has a future even if not on the big screen: “It definitely doesn’t have to be on a movie screen. I don’t know if you saw the TRON ride, which opened in Shanghai and was amazing…I think the TRON franchise is alive in rides and I think there’s still interest in exploring other things like VR, but as far as the TV show, I don’t know, I think that would be tough. As you saw on screen, so much of the world has to be created digitally. You can’t just go and film a TRON movie, or at least the TRON side of it, so I don’t know. I would never say never. There’s possibly a version of that, but that’s up to Disney.”

So there you have it. TRON: Ascension is frozen, not dead. And TRON could live on in other ways… whatever it is, we want the story completed because TRON: Legacy is one of our favourite movies of the last few years (the soundtrack alone makes it special) so we really want to see where this all goes.

What about you all? Let us know if you care about the outcome of the TRON story.