That’s no misprint, Tron 3 AKA Tron: Ares, AKA on Insta’s director’s chair as Tr3n is set to film and planned for theatrical release in 2025. Gillian Anderson, that played Dana Scully on X-Files is joining the cast for the sequel.
The film follows Jared Leto’s titular character, Ares, described as a program from the Grid—the virtual world of Tron’s gaming world and broader tech program research—who enters the real world. Aside from Leto, Anderson joins Jodie Turner-Smith, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Cameron Monaghan, and Sarah Desjardins in the cast, but it remains to be seen if there’ll be any carry over from 2010’s Tron: Legacy
Gillian Anderson Is Joining Tron 3 (gizmodo.com)
IMDB has a listing for Tron: Ares, which includes a more futuristic logo, but very little else is known about the film besides the cast.
As for the original movie, Tron, we’re obviously fans here at PGM, and are score chasing the game (Season 2 Week 16: Tron (Arcade) – How to Join Us, Play, Beat Your Personal Best). The whole idea of getting inside a video game interspersed with the real world arcade 80s just hits all the gaming bullseyes. The arcade game is a series of 4-minigames taken from various parts of the film and has a cool design and special joystick with trigger controller.
Personally, wasn’t as big a fan of Tron: Legacy as the original, but maybe the third time will bring back the charm of the original. Certainly doesn’t hurt getting Gillian Anderson joining the cast, depending on how intregal her character turns out to be to the story, of course. Hope she’s not some five minute screen time slightly better than an extra add-in, but we’ll have to see.
Disney is behind this film, which is another wild card. On one hand the budget will likely not be a problem, but on the other, potentially it could be littered with unnecessary social themes which turn off some (many?) film-goers and fans of the series. Probably, don’t want to get started on what Disney has done to Star Wars.
But what about new games to go with the movie? This is where the real promise and excitement of a new sequel comes. In April 2023, we got Tron: Identity (Steam) which has 182 “Very Positive” reviews on Steam and sits at $14.99 regular price as of this writing. I have it wishlisted, but haven’t checked it out as of this writing.
The reason I haven’t bought and played Tron: Identity yet is because it’s billed as more of a detective story than an arcade game, like the original, see most helpful reviews below:
Maybe, I’m in the minority, but I wanted something more arcade-y. Am worried that the new Indiana Jones game will suffer the same fate (see: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle coming in 2024 announced at Xbox Developer Direct + 10 Best Indy Games?)
Are you looking forward to Tron: Ares? Does Gillian Anderson make you more interested in the sequel? Do you enjoy playing the original Tron arcade game and hope a Tron: Ares game is forthcoming?