From Tron, the original 1982 film’s groundbreaking VFX to Tron: Legacy’s digital dazzle a full generation later, the franchise has always been a step ahead of reality.
Now, after over a decade later, Tron: Ares is ready to boot up and deliver the next major system upgrade, one that might just blur the lines between the virtual and real worlds entirely.
Director Joachim Rønning is going all in on redefining what digital filmmaking can look like. In a new interview with Empire, he reveals that ILM is treating this project with a level of reverence usually reserved for cinema’s most ambitious undertakings: “The Holy Grail of computer graphics.”
This time, The Grid is getting a full-scale evolution. Rønning explains: “The concept was that a program is filming a program. So it’s shot by a robot.” Even the camera work has been reimagined, with motion-controlled movements mimicking the cold precision of a digital entity. It’s not just stylized, it’s part of the story.
The return of Tron also brings back one of the minds who started it all, Steven Lisberger. And for him, the franchise’s legacy has always been about staying just a few steps ahead of society, saying: “Something comes out, and it’s too avant-garde at the time. And then the real world catches up with it.”
But this time, the world has caught up fast, maybe too fast. Tron: Ares will drop its digital world into our own, bringing iconic elements like Light Cycles into real-world environments.
He continues: “It has become a symbol of our riding this technology that is going faster than we ever imagined. We’ve integrated into it, and the speed of it is mind-boggling. And in Ares, it’s a metaphor for the fact that this technology is moving through every part of our reality.”
That idea of tech bleeding into every aspect of our lives sits at the core of Ares, and it’s not lost on the cast. Greta Lee (Past Lives), who plays programmer Eve Kim, says the themes hit close to home.
“The movie touches all of these things. So many days on set, we would get the chills, because the ideas that [Lisberger] put in place years ago are not just still relevant, but in our faces. Inescapable.”
Whether or not you’ve been waiting for another trip to The Grid, Tron: Ares might be arriving at exactly the right moment, where sci-fi isn’t so fictional anymore. It’s not just about escaping into a digital world this time. It’s about what happens when that world escapes into ours.
The film stars Jared Leto, Cameron Monaghan (Star Wars Jedi), Evan Peters (WandaVision), Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith (Without Remorse), Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson.
Jeff Bridges is also returning to the world of Tron.
Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne wrote the script. The film arrives in theaters on October 10, 2025.
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