Tron 3 story teased by Joseph Kosinski, says sequel isn’t dead

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Joseph Kosinski's TRON: LEGACY is a film which has certainly grown on me over time. Is it perfect? No, but it expanded the world of TRON in a visually beautiful way, teased further adventures on and off the Grid and had a kick-ass soundtrack. Development on a sequel, titled TRON: ASCENSION, was well underway in 2015 with Kosinski set to direct and Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde returning as well. Then, just a few months before the film was slated to kick off production in Vancouver, Disney pulled the plug.

At a recent IMAX screening of TRON: LEGACY, Joseph Kosinski joined Collider for a Q&A after the movie and revealed that the sequel isn't dead, but just sitting there in "cryogenic freeze" waiting for the right time to move forward. Kosinski also reminded the audience that at the time TRON: LEGACY was made, Disney didn't yet "own everything."

Disney did not own Marvel. Disney did not own Lucasfilm…they own everything now. 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.

I can't really see another TRON movie making the type of money that the Star Wars and Marvel movies do (TRON: LEGACY took in $400 million worldwide), but it's nice to know that Joseph Kosinski hasn't completely given up hope. As for what the third film would have been about, and maybe still will, Kosinski teased that it's an "invasion movie."

The movie was called, “TRON: Ascension”, I think that’s out there. 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 Ascension was 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.

Joseph Kosinski's next, GRANITE MOUNTAIN, will be a bit of a departure from the sci-fi fare he's tackled previously. Starring Ben Hardy, Taylor Kitsch, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, James Badge Dale, Andie MacDowell and Jennifer Connelly, the film tells the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of firefighters who faced one of the deadliest wildfires in history in order to save the small town of Yarnell in Arizona. GRANITE MOUNTAIN is set for a September 22, 2017 release.