TRON: ARES Brings Back a Decade-Old Script Element That Shaped the Film

When Tron: Ares is released it’ll mark the end of a long and complicated journey that began right after Tron: Legacy hit screens in 2010. For nearly 15 years, Disney cycled through writers, directors, and ideas in its attempt to return to the Grid.

What fans are getting now is not the sequel that was first imagined back then, but surprisingly, parts of that early vision remain at the core of the movie.

One of the first writers hired to tackle Tron 3 was David DiGilio, who is now best known as the showrunner of The Terminal List with Chris Pratt. Back in 2011, DiGilio was tasked with writing a follow-up that centered on Sam Flynn and Quorra, played by Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde.

While those characters are no longer part of the new film, DiGilio recently discovered he still earned a “story by” credit. Why? Because a character he created over a decade ago survived through every draft and became the heart of the new story.

DiGilio told The Hollywood Reporter:

“When the movie finally got made, I heard that the title was Tron: Ares, and Ares is a character that I had created in the process as the villain. And Jared [Leto], I believe, was attached at the time to play it.

“I don’t know the full process, but he may have also been one of the champions who kept it going. And over time, Ares morphed from being the villain to being the title character.”

He went on to explain how the Writers Guild of America ultimately awarded him credit for shaping the foundation of the story.

“Once it got made, Disney sent out, via the WGA, the notice of tentative writing credit. So I saw that I was sharing ‘story by’ with Jesse [Wigutow] and that Jesse was getting ‘screenplay by,’ and I was thrilled.

“But, of course, you end up in arbitration when you have 15 writers, and the positive out of that experience was reading the script and getting to see that the foundation remained. The foundational structure remained, even if Sam and Quorra had moved on.

“We no longer had those actors under option, and a new wonderful cast is in there now. But that overarching story remained the same. So I was really happy to share that credit with Jesse, and I’m fired up to see the movie.”

According to DiGilio, the plot involving corporations fighting to bring digital lifeforms into the real world was part of his original script. Back then, Ares was the villain, but in this new version he has shifted into the lead role.

That transformation earned DiGilio his credit more than a decade later and highlights how much of the movie still traces back to his earliest draft.

After years of development stops and starts, Tron: Ares is finally real, carrying the DNA of a script written in 2011 and reshaping it for a new cast and era. Fans won’t have to wait much longer to see how that story plays out when the film opens on October 10.