Director Joseph Kosinski says you can probably blame Tron 3 getting axed on Star Wars and Marvel

Ah, the perils of monoculture. Martin Scorsese tried to warn us that Marvel was choking cinema to death, but now even precious valuable IP is getting left on the table at the expense of Disney’s Goliath franchises. Or at least, that’s Joseph Kosinski’s perspective.

By all accounts, Kosinski is a big-budget success story coming off of Top Gun: Maverick. His directorial debut, Tron: Legacy, was another highly anticipated sequel–and he would have been happy to do another Tron, if not for the studio. “I got so close. I really tried. I got close in 2015, and Disney pulled the plug on it,” Kosinski told Vulture. “I hadn’t built anything, but I had the whole movie storyboarded and written. I was really excited because it was inverting the idea: It was all that stuff coming into our world, and it was about the blending of the two.”

“But it was a different Disney by 2015,” the director continued. “When I made Tron: Legacy, they didn’t own Marvel; they didn’t own Star Wars. We were the play for fantasy and science fiction. And once you’ve got those other things under your umbrella, it makes sense that you’re going to put your money into a known property and not the weird art student with black fingernails in the corner—that was Tron. And that’s okay.”

It’s funny to describe a major blockbuster like Tron: Legacy as the weird art kid of the Disney family, but compared to golden children Marvel and Star Wars, it’s not far off. Kosinski’s not bitter, either, reflecting for Vulture: “Had I made Tron: Ascension, I wouldn’t have made Only the Brave, and I wouldn’t have made the movies I made. But remember, the first Tron was not a hit when it came out. It’s a cult classic. And if Tron: Legacy’s becoming the same thing, I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

For the record, a third Tron movie is not totally dead in the water. Jared Leto has been attached to the project for years, and he even gave an update about it during the Morbius press tour. He told Screen Rant: “I’m a super fan of Tron, and we are working hard on ‘Tron’ with our incredible partners at Disney. Just an amazing group of creative people. We’re getting closer. We’re getting closer and closer, and who knows? Something may be [coming] sooner than later.” Maybe now that Kosinski’s flying high with Top Gun, Disney will come crawling back.