Bruce Boxleitner has long been a champion of the TRON series, having appeared in the original film, its sequel TRON: LEGACY, the animated series TRON: Uprising, and the TRON 2.0 video-game; but with TRON: ASCENSION's long and bumpy production leading to the projects cancellation at the last moment, Bruce Boxleitner has finally had enough.
Speaking with /Film, Boxleitner said that "I don’t really care anymore, I’m done with it. I’ve moved on. I hate to say that but it’s been too up and down for me. I would rather not just keep going. I don’t want to repeat my career anymore. That’d be like, ‘Let’s reboot Scarecrow and Mrs. King.’ No, I’m not interested. Or Babylon 5.”
One of the prevailing rumours which followed TRON: ASCENSION's cancellation was that Disney pulled the plug after the poor performance of Brad Bird's TOMORROWLAND, but Bruce Boxleitner suspects that it had more to do with Disney acquiring both Marvel and Lucasfilm and losing interest in science-fiction.
I’ve got a feeling they’re going to play it safe with their old [formula]. I mean, Tim Burton’s doing Dumbo. They’re going to make live-action out of their old animated classics. Apparently, that was successful. They also have Star Wars. Let’s not neglect that, and Marvel. Maybe they just felt they had enough of that sci-fi. We were the only real science fiction. Star Wars is fantasy, sword and sorcery fantasy with a spaceship. Marvel is superhero comics. Star Wars, yes, is science fiction. There’s fantasy elements as well, but Marvel is not. It’s comic books. It’s really not sci-fi. It’s not thinking science fiction. Maybe they decided they don’t want to do science fiction.
Pre-production of TRON: ASCENSION was well underway with both Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund set to return for the sequel and Joseph Kosinski on board to direct. The film was to begin shooting in Vancouver from October 2015 through February 2016 but as we now know, it was not to be. It's possible that TRON: ASCENSION will be resurrected one day but it may have to do so without Bruce Boxleitner.