Ares (Tron)

Tron: Ares (stylized as TRON: Ares) is a 2025 American science fiction action film directed by Joachim Rønning from a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow, based on a story by David Digilio and Wigutow. It is the third film in the Tron series and a sequel to Tron: Legacy (2010). The film features an ensemble cast including Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson, with Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Kevin Flynn from the previous films.

Development of a sequel to Tron: Legacy began in October 2010 by franchise creator Steven Lisberger. In March 2017, Walt Disney Pictures shifted plans toward a soft reboot with Leto playing a new character. Garth Davis was set as director in August 2020 when Wigutow was working on the script, but stepped down in January 2023. Rønning replaced him a month later. Production was expected to begin in August 2023 but was delayed by the 2023 Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Filming ultimately began in January 2024 in Vancouver and wrapped in May. By August, industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails was announced to be composing the score. The band's members, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, served as executive producers on the film, alongside Legacy director Joseph Kosinski.

Tron: Ares premiered in Los Angeles on October 6 and was released in the United States by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on October 10, 2025. The film received mixed reviews from critics.

In 2025, fifteen years after Sam Flynn's attempt to bring his father Kevin back from the Grid, both ENCOM and rival company Dillinger Systems, led by former ENCOM executive Ed Dillinger's grandson Julian, have been engaged in a race to bring digital constructs into the real world but can so far only sustain them for 29 minutes before deresolution. ENCOM CEO Eve Kim and her confidante Seth Flores go to a remote station in Alaska that Kevin Flynn set up decades ago, believing that on one of Flynn's old computers lies the "permanence code" that could allow breaking the 29-minute barrier. After finding the code, they successfully transfer a digital navel orange tree into the real world that lasts for hours.