Fans of the Tron franchise are probably celebrating this week thanks to the flurry of news that’s seen casting on Disney’s third entry announced with great detail. Previously, Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story star Evan Peters was cast in Tron 3, making him the first casting on the project besides Jared Leto. Now the latest activity has seen director Joachim Rønning’s threequel score its first two female leads, which continues to signal that it’s almost game time for this long-awaited sequel.
Two different reports have broken that give the hypothetically titled Tron: Ares its latest faces. From THR, the news that Past Lives star Greta Lee had been cast was sent out into the world. Meanwhile, over at Variety, The Acolyte star Jodie Turner-Smith has been mentioned as joining up as well. And if you thought the previous plot details revealed from Evan Peters’ casting was juicy, wait until you get a load of what these reports have revealed.
Apparently, Jared Leto is indeed playing Ares, “the manifestation of a program that becomes sentient and crosses over into the human world.” So that sentient AI that was mentioned previously now has a face to put to the name, which could very well confirm the Tron: Ares title Leto once accidentally leaked so long ago. As for our new players on The Grid, we only have details on Greta Lee’s character, who is “a video game programmer and tech company CEO who aims to protect her world-changing technology.”
So already, it looks like the human world will be the foundation for Tron 3’s main story, with the digital realm intruding into that fabric through Jared Leto’s Ares. I hate to put too fine of a point on it, but once again, the now-discarded draft for Tron: Ascension seems to be more important than ever. Though it doesn’t feel like we’ll be following the story of Sam Flynn, as Evan Peters’ casting could be for an unknown figure who's going to battle Ares in our world, and maybe even in the machine world.
With Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith’s casting now on the books, Tron’s next adventure is making some pretty fluid progress into production. As the writers strike and other potential industry strikes may put these plans on pause, it seems that all of these announcements currently dropping are meant to keep the momentum going on what could be called Tron: Ares. As always, fans of this legendary Disney saga will have to be patient and keep watching closely for any further movement in the near future.
Tron 3 still doesn’t have a release date or a confirmed start date. However, production is still rumored to be starting this August; so you might want to polish up those ID discs just in case. And if you want to revisit almost the entire Tron timeline, you can head to your Disney+ subscription and partake in the pre-existing chapters in preparation for the future. End of Line.
