Disney's $180 Million Sci-Fi Flop: The Tron Franchise's Struggles

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Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger in Tron Ares

Adrienne Tyler is a movies & TV features writer, with a focus on horror. She has written for Netflix, FanSided, & more. She was a regular guest on the Netfreaks podcast and was a YouTuber at some point. Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once.

While Disney has many classic movies and big hits, it has also had some huge failures, and it learned an important sci-fi lesson way too late with a big commercial flop. Disney has many titles among the best movies of all time, both animated and live-action, and for different target audiences.

Disney is best known for its family-friendly content and, in recent years, its big-budget productions, most notably those from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars. When it comes to sci-fi, Disney has had some big hits, but it recently learned an important lesson that cost it millions thanks to Tron: Ares.

Tron: Ares Was A Box Office Flop

A sci-fi franchise that Disney refuses to let die, despite recent failures, is Tron. The franchise began in 1982 with Tron, directed by Steven Lisberger and starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a video game developer. Since then, the franchise has expanded with more movies, TV shows, and more.

On the big screen, Tron returned in 2010 with Tron: Legacy, and though it wasn’t the critics’ favorite, it was a big box office hit. Disney waited 15 years to make another Tron movie, titled Tron: Ares. Directed by Joachim Rønning, Tron: Ares follows an AI program named Ares that is sent into the human world to steal a code.

Unfortunately for Disney, Tron: Ares was a box office flop, not even matching its budget of $180–220 million. Tron: Ares made $142.2 million at the box office, and it didn’t do well with critics, either, holding a 53% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, giving it a “rotten” category.

Tron Was Never Going To Be A Blockbuster Franchise

As entertaining as it is, Tron was never going to reach blockbuster status like other sci-fi franchises. Although the first Tron movie is now considered a cult film, and it did well at the box office, it wasn’t well-received by critics, who praised its visuals but found that it lacked in terms of narrative.

Unfortunately, the Tron franchise didn’t really take note of the critical reception of the first movie, and “style over substance” has been its consistent issue. The Tron franchise has had weak storytelling, underdeveloped characters, and has lacked depth, with the main focus going towards its visual style.

The franchise’s inconsistent releases have also prevented it from reaching blockbuster status, with a gap of almost 30 years between the first two movies and then 15 years between Legacy and Ares. This has stopped the franchise from building a consistent audience, and for those who have stayed for years, the franchise repeating the same mistakes over and over eventually becomes tiring.

Disney's Best Move Would've Been A Sequel To Tron: Legacy

Although Tron: Ares was marketed as a sequel to Tron: Legacy, the reality is completely different. Tron: Ares is set years after Legacy, but it doesn’t bring the latter’s main characters back, instead focusing on new ones and their own paths, stories, and goals.

While Tron: Legacy continued the story of Kevin Flynn and introduced his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), ENCOM’s primary shareholder, who, while investigating his father’s disappearance, is transported onto the Grid, Ares leaves Sam aside and tells a different story set in the same universe, with new characters and a new threat.

Tron: Ares was already a big risk due to how long Disney waited to return to the Tron franchise, and giving it a parallel story rather than making it an actual sequel to Legacy made it even more difficult for it to succeed. The ending of Tron: Ares, however, leaves the door open for an actual continuation of Sam’s story, with Ares planning to find him and Quorra.

While it’s hard to say if Tron: Ares would have been a critical success had it been a real sequel to Legacy, it would have probably performed better at the box office and drawn a bigger audience by appealing to the curiosity of what happened to Sam Flynn after the events of Tron: Legacy.

Is There Any Future Left For Tron?

As mentioned above, the Tron franchise isn’t the most consistent one, and it could surprise its audience at any moment with a new project. When it comes to movies, at the time of writing, there are no plans for more, whether sequels, prequels, or standalone stories, and after Tron: Ares’ box office failure, it’s unlikely a new movie will happen soon.

On TV, there are no Tron projects lined up for now, with Tron: Uprising being canceled in 2013 and another live-action series that was in development in 2020 also being canceled. As inconsistent as the releases of the Tron franchise have been, Disney seems to refuse to let it die, so it wouldn’t be surprising if, in a couple of years, the studio decides to make another movie.

The Tron franchise will never reach blockbuster status like other popular sci-fi franchises, but what it will definitely continue to have is cult status. That doesn’t mean the franchise is bad, but it hasn’t learned from its mistakes – unless, of course, its whole point is to be visually stunning regardless of its narrative quality.