Tron 3 might happen with Jared Leto and, somehow, not Joseph Kosinski

The legacy of Disney’s never-quite-successful enough Tron is complicated. 1982’s Tron was a watershed moment for special effects, delivering one of the first films to introduce the audience to computer-generated animation mixed with live-action actors. Steven Lisberger’s truly original work couldn’t muster an Oscar nomination for best visual effects, nor did it set the box office ablaze. Disney continued its Tron tradition in 2010. Joseph Kosinski’s Tron Legacy is another visually inventive feature unlike anything in the Disney vault that crashed and burned, like so many lightbikes (and by “crashed and burned,” we mean the movie only made $400 million at the box office). Yet, despite the immediate financial failures of the Tron movies, Disney always seems to be asking, “Has anyone seen the movie Tron?”

So, following the success of Top Gun: Maverick, many assumed that Kosinski had the clout to finally make Tron 3. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case because things don’t work that way. It brings us no joy to report that Disney is in talks for Tron 3, sans Kosinski. Instead, per Deadline, the Mouse House is turning to Joachim Rønning to direct [sigh] Jared Leto in Tron: Ares. Rønning, who just finished the adaptation of an Arrested Development joke, Young Woman And The Sea, for Disney, has been a company man for a few years, turning in big-budget sequels Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, two very real movies that actually came out and won’t instill much confidence in fans. While it is the most Disney thing in the world to throw a thankless sequel at this director, the movie would reportedly be a sequel to Tron Legacy, so anyone truly invested in the Flynn family legacy should get some closure, finally.

Last year, Kosinski said that Star Wars and Marvel killed any chance of his pitch, Tron: Ascension, becoming reality.

“I got so close. I really tried,” Kosinski told Vulture. “I got close in 2015, and Disney pulled the plug on it. I hadn’t built anything, but I had the whole movie storyboarded and written. … But it was a different Disney by 2015. 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.”