A Tron series was in the works and then scrapped at Disney+

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

There is no denying that Disney+ has been popular since its launch in November of last year but recent media reports suggest that the streamer is having a bit of an identity crisis as it establishes original content. Shows like the Love, Simon spinoff, Love, Victor shifted to Hulu due to its content being a tad too risqué for the young Disney audience and it's a similar issue that faced the Lizzie Maguire revival which let go of its showrunner because Disney wanted them to play things a bit more safe. Even though Bob Iger has stepped down as CEO of Disney after 15 years, he's not leaving the fold entirely. Iger is moving toward restructuring their streaming services Disney+ and Hulu & one of the projects revealed to have been in development before being scrapped was a Tron series based on the 1982 film.

The series was never publicly announced but the project was led by John Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 YEARS OF SLAVE. Ridley set up the project through his overall ABC Studios deal which began with the highly underrated and canceled too soon anthology series, American Crime. Since the series was never officially greenlit, things were said to have fallen apart behind the scenes & what plot direction the series would've taken is also unknown. TRON, released in 1982, was followed up many years later in 2010 with the very expensive TRON: LEGACY. The film was mostly successful due to worldwide grosses which saw it finish with $400 million globally on a $170 million budget (of the $400 million global take, $172 million came from the U.S.). The overall total was enough to get talks of another film going. Director Joseph Kosinski did have plans for a sequel called TRON: ASCENSION but those plans were scrapped by Disney in 2017. A cult animated series called Tron: Uprising saw the light of day during the 2012-2013 season. 

Whether or not the John Ridley series would've followed any of these stories will have to remain a mystery unless Ridley decides to speak on it. I will say he was an intriguing choice to develop a show like that because it definitely doesn't feel similar to his other material butI'd love to hear what idea he came up with.

Do you want to see the TRON brand continue in some form?