It’s no secret that Disney made Tron: Legacy hoping it would turn into their next big franchise. Pirates of the Caribbean has only one more movie left in it, then Johnny Depp is done, which means they need a franchise replacement. Disney’s so hot to get another Tron going that even before the release of Legacy there were rumors here that work was already underway on planning the plot of another one.
While the Tron sequel didn’t exactly make Captain Jack Sparrow money, thanks in no small part to the high prices of 3D, it’s made nearly three-hundred million worldwide. It’s good enough that AICN says an official sequel announcement is imminent from Disney.
So what will it be about? Tron: Legacy writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz were supposed to be hard at work coming up with ideas for the sequel last year. At the time rumor had it that Tron 3 would explain the absence of Lori, who played a critical role in the first movie, but didn’t make it into the new one. That seems more like wishful thinking from fans, to me, than reality. What does make more sense is the rumor that Cillian Murphy’s Legacy cameo could be turned into something more significant. It’s easy to imagine him as the villain of the next film.
Most importantly though, the move Disney really needs to make here is the firing of Horowitz and Kitsis. Even those who liked Tron: Legacy (me for instance) will mostly admit that the script really wasn’t very good. Or if they keep the same writing duo, get them to ditch the idea of a closed system and forget all the pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo about self-created lifeforms. None of that worked and worse, it got in the way of the things that did.
For an in-depth look at what Disney needs to fix to make Tron 3 work go right here.