How TRON: ARES Became Jared Leto's Personal Mission to Keep the Grid Alive
When Disney announced Tron: Ares, fans were surprised that the sci-fi franchise was getting another chance on the big screen. It had been 15 years since Tron: Legacy, and while that sequel built on the original’s mythology, Ares seemed to reboot everything with a new cast, new creative team, and a brand-new lead with Jared Leto.
The absence of returning characters, aside from a brief Jeff Bridges cameo, left many wondering what Disney’s plan was. Now that Ares has been released and has struggled to find its footing at the box office, those questions have only grown louder.
Well, it turns out that Tron: Ares wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for Leto.
After Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski’s planned sequel, Tron: Ascension, was scrapped by Disney, the project was all but dead. That earlier version had been set to continue the Flynn family saga with a large-scale “multi-narrative” story.
Jesse Wigutow, who also wrote Ares, recalled that Ascension was “a very big sequel to Legacy” and would’ve reunited the main characters from both previous films. One of those new additions was a mysterious program named Ares, a role that had already been cast with Leto.
When Disney pulled the plug on Ascension, Leto refused to let his connection to the Grid fade away. A lifelong Tron fan, the actor saw something special in Ares, and he wasn’t about to let the idea disappear into a black hole of abandoned projects.
At a recent press event attended by Polygon, Leto shared just how much the franchise meant to him:
“I fell in love with the very first film — saw it in the theater as a young kid. It changed my life, it really showed me creativity and technology in a way I'd never imagined...For me, [it's] one of the great science-fiction franchises, and I'm really proud to be a part of it.”
That lifelong connection fueled a decade-long push to bring Tron back to life. Leto and his producing partner Emma Ludbrook re-approached Wigutow, this time with a different idea… instead of resurrecting the old story, they’d rebuild around the Ares character himself.
Wigutow explained how it all came together:
“[Leto] ultimately came to me and said, 'Let's just build a movie around this character. I want to understand this character, his origins, and I want to take him to a very different place.'
“So that's really the provenance and the origin of this specific film is Jared's dogged persistence on getting it done, but also telling the story of this character specifically."
From that collaboration came a new vision, one that echoes Tron’s signature themes of identity, technology, and humanity. Wigutow revealed how they redefined Ares’ story:
"Out of that came a one-page document: What if this character is the villain, but [...] then he has a change. He finds elements of humanity that change his programming and makes him want to live like one of us. And what came out of that is what you see."
That concept of a self-aware program discovering empathy drives Tron: Ares and connects it back to the philosophical roots of the franchise. While it doesn’t continue the Flynn family saga, the film honors Tron’s past in clever ways, including sequences where Ares ventures into the original 1982 Grid, complete with a vintage Lightcycle and the return of classic elements like Bit and Flynn.
As a producer, Leto’s persistence brought Tron back to the big screen when no one else could. As a performer, however, his take on Ares has divided audiences.
His passion for the franchise is definitly strang, but some critics argue that his performance feels too restrained to capture the emotional spark that the story demands.
Still, without that passion snd persistance, Tron: Ares simply wouldn’t exist. The movie stands as proof that sometimes, keeping a sci-fi dream alive requires a fan with enough obsession, and influence, to bend reality to their will.
It’s a shame the movie didn’t do well at the box office because it’s actually a pretty cool movie.