TRON: Ares to Deliver AI-Driven Action This October

As San Diego Comic-Con draws near, Disney is continuing to tease the presentation that it will have during the annual convention by releasing a new trailer for TRON: Ares, the next entry in the franchise from the legendary film and digital effects artists behind TRON. The new movie, directed by Joachim Rønning, is a new chapter in the TRON saga that shifts the focus of the story from the digital world of the Grid to the real world.

The last time audiences visited the Grid was in 2010’s TRON: Legacy. The film followed Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of TRON’s Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). At the end of the movie, Sam thwarts an attempt by the Grid’s malicious program Clu to merge the Grid with the real world. Sam also escapes the Grid with Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) who was targeted for deletion by Clu.

Disney initially intended for the third TRON film to take place immediately after Legacy’s events, but plans quickly got off the ground and slowed to a crawl. The project was officially greenlit back in October 2010 and was meant to follow Sam and Quorra as Sam took over his father’s company, ENCOM. However, in 2015, Disney canceled the sequel to Legacy. While the precise reasons for the sequel’s cancellation remain a bit murky, one of the cited reasons was reportedly the box office performance of a certain other sci-fi movie from that era, Tomorrowland.

In 2020, Disney gave the franchise another go, and while TRON: Ares is still technically not a direct continuation of Legacy’s story, many aspects from the planned Legacy sequel were still folded into the film. As is well known by now, elements from older scripts from the franchise are now being carried forward into this new film. One of them is the character of Ares, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) being from those older scripts. After much pandemic delay and development hell due to the recent Hollywood strikes, TRON: Ares is finally finished. In a theatrical release window, it’s now scheduled to be released on October 10, 2025.

TRON: Ares Synopsis: A New Life for an Ancient AI Program

In a statement from Disney, the film’s official synopsis reads, “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission. Ares’s journey would soon lead to humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.” In the film, Ares is played by Jared Leto, who is joined by Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. The cast also includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. The original TRON fans can also sleep at night, as Jeff Bridges also returns as Kevin Flynn. Meanwhile, Nine Inch Nails have been tapped to compose the film’s score.

In the new trailer, The Ultimate Soldier Will Be Coming for Us

The first trailer for TRON: Ares dropped back in April, and while it was a feast for the eyes with TRON’s signature neon-drenched lines and lightcycles and digital vistas, the footage also left much of the story and premise up to the imagination. However, the new trailer does a better job of explaining at least a sliver of the plot.

The trailer begins with a scene that might as well be out of a tech company’s keynotes, past, present, and future. On stage, Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) makes the bold claim that, “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like? We get there? Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

He then goes on to unveil his “ultimate soldier” and introduces himself as Ares. In an act of hubris, Dillinger promises that, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” Before Dillinger can finish his thought, he demonstrates his power by knocking Ares out in front of the entire audience while saying, “…, I will simply make you another.” The scene establishes Dillinger as an unscrupulous corporate villain who is not only making the future with his AI but also believes he can do so without opposition.

The trailer, however, foreshadows that things might not exactly be how Dillinger expects them to. Dillinger may believe that Ares is his to command, but Ares might be on a mission of his own, as the program leaves the digital world to search for what he is looking for, something that he cannot quite understand. This could be an interesting philosophical twist for the film that is reminiscent of Kevin Flynn’s inquiry into the nature of sentience when he also gets a glimpse of the virtual world in Legacy and asks the question, “A malfunctioning program that wants to live, why is that?”

Fans of the original TRON will also get a hook to bring them to the film with the return of Bridges as Flynn, while Leto will also be on display as the AI that steps into the world of flesh and blood. The trailer also promises both grand action and big questions about AI, autonomy, and the responsibilities that come with creating technology.

At long last, TRON: Ares will finally have an arrival date. October 10, 2025, is circled on the calendar — the digital and the physical are about to meet on the big screen like never before