The Untold Story: The Production Challenges of ‘Tron: Ares’ and Its Evolution From ‘Tron: Ascenion’ [Exclusive]

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Tron: Ares

After almost 15 years of rumored development, a return to the grid is upon us. Following the 2010 release of Tron: Legacy, a wholly underrated neon-soaked sci-fi gem that welcomed a future great to the directing chair, rumors swirled for some time that a follow-up would receive the green light. Now, after fans have patiently waited for far too long, Tron: Ares is now playing in theaters and IMAX.

Starring Jared Leto as the titular Ares, the movie is billed as yet another vibrant, fast-paced blockbuster, helmed this time by Young Woman and the Sea‘s Joachim Rønning. In the movie, Leto’s sophisticated program makes the leap from the grid to the real world on a deadly mission. Joining Leto in an eye-catching cast are the likes of Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson, with Jeff Bridges even reprising his role as Kevin Flynn.

Ahead of the film’s release, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the chance to chat with writer Jesse Wigutow to discuss all things Ares. They talk about how the project happened, what set piece was cut due to budget, what it’s really like writing a light cycle scene, the 80s stuff, the end credits scene, and so much more. In addition, Wigutow talks about other exciting projects, like Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again, and past prospects with David Fincher and Brad Pitt. Check out the full interview below.

David Fincher and Brad Pitt Nearly Teamed Up for This ‘Gossip Girl’ Adjacent Movie

“Brad Pitt was taken with the script and attached himself.”

COLLIDER: I want to jump backwards. I read that right after you got out of film school, you sold your spec script, Urban Townie, to Warner Bros., and when it sold, [David] Fincher and Brad Pitt were attached. Explain, if you don’t mind.

JESSE WIGUTOW: I went to the American Film Institute, where I now teach, by the way, as a slight anecdote, and I had a really splashy, big entry out of film school, into the entertainment business. I wrote a handful of scripts in school. I sold one of them, Urban Townie, maybe four to six weeks after graduating, something in that vein, and it just made a lot of waves. It got me into rooms with a lot of people, and Brad Pitt was taken with the script and attached himself. It had a lot of momentum and ultimately never got made for a lot of reasons, some of which I’ve kind of learned as a grown-up now, because I was very young when that all happened. But I had a lot of fucking fun, man. I got to hang out with them and started my career in a really interesting way.

Do you think that script still works, or do you think that was a moment in time?

WIGUTOW: I think a little bit of both. I think the script still works. I think the world that it was kind of examining, while it’s not new, has been explored since then. That’s now 1999. So, Gossip Girl, for example, steps into similar territory — it’s not quite the same tone. But I think it could work. Also, as a matured writer, I look at it as a different chapter of my life, so if they wanted to make it, awesome. If not, it’s all good. It really got me rolling.

No, of course. By the way, you should be thanking that script from here to eternity, in terms of getting your foot in the door.

WIGUTOW: Yeah, absolutely. And I got to work with Fincher again, and with Brad Pitt a couple of times after that set. It began a very good relationship and forayed into the business.

We Almost Had a ‘Kitchen Confidential’ With Brad Pitt

“Money and intentions kind of complicated it, and politics.”

You were involved with Kitchen Confidential. Did you write that script? Whatever happened with that?

WIGUTOW: I did write that script. I wrote that from the ground up. It was an adaptation of the book, and the book had not yet been published, even. So, I got to go work with Anthony Bourdain and got to work with Tony in his kitchen; he was still cooking. I went and spent a few weeks shadowing him, essentially, and watching him navigate New York City, going out to dinner with him at two in the morning, where other chefs would eat, and really changed my palate and my understanding of the culinary world. That script, again, had Brad Pitt attached, Fincher attached, and a lot of really big elements attached to it, a lot of momentum. Some crazy names as part of the cast. Then, money and intentions kind of complicated it, and politics, and it wound up not going in that iteration. Then I think six or seven years later, the rights to the book were then bought out as a TV show for the Bradley Cooper show.

The next one I want to ask you about is Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s very weird to have these other projects, and then Thomas the Tank Engine.

WIGUTOW: [Laughs] You’re throwing me some curveballs. That’s really funny. One way to say this is that I’ve really followed my nose creatively in this business, and I’ve been lucky to do that and be able to make a living. But it’s also been difficult for people on the other side, the hiring side, for example, to identify exactly what it is that Jesse does, and “What would we hire him to do?” which has allowed me to remain kind of excited about the work I do, but it’s also had its downside in that regard. Point being, I’ve played in a lot of different genres.

For Thomas, I had a relationship with the president of Mattel, who had asked me to come help, like a concept room. How do we break a movie for Thomas the Tank Engine in live action? I went into a room with some really smart, interesting writers, we dialogued for two or three days, and I don’t know that we came out with a specific take, but different versions of what the movie could be. I had a very specific interest in one angle. I happened to have two young kids at the time, and one was really into Thomas, and was showing, potentially, signs of being on the spectrum. I won’t go too deep into this, but there is a very deep connection to the Thomas the Tank Engine world and autism and kids who are on the spectrum, who are really enamored with trains and the intricacies of train engines and so forth. So the story that I wound up telling, along with another writer who I love working with, was about a kid on the spectrum who gets sucked onto the Island of Sodor, and the rules of the Island of Sodor very much mirror the way that his brain works. So, where he’s kind of an outcast in our world, he’s really the hero inside Thomas’s world.

‘Daredevil: Born Again’ EP Gives Exciting Update on Seasons 2 and 3

“There is clarity of vision.”

Image via Disney+

The next thing, before we jump into Tron, is I’m obviously a fan of Daredevil, and you work on Daredevil: Born Again. What can you say about Season 2, which you recently wrapped filming?

WIGUTOW: It’s not a whole lot I can say, obviously, in terms of specifics, but it is a very big portrait that we’re telling, a big New York City story, crime, politics. Obviously, we have Mayor Fisk and all of the palace intrigue around him inside City Hall. All of it, I think, is really awesome. What I take away most from the season — and we’re just going through cuts now, we’re about to embark on Season 3 — is that we told this really big story, it got very wide, and then we kind of drive it in the finale to really what matters most. I think what people care about are these two characters and the conflict that they’re in, how deeply they hate each other, and how deeply they need each other. We really carve out all the stuff around them that we’ve built up, and it’s just the two of them, face-to-face, in a really, I think, satisfying climax.

I’ll be honest, with Season 1, and I’m just going to be brutal, I thought it started phenomenal and it ended phenomenal, and the middle I felt like the stuff had already been shot and you had to work it in. I see the promise of what Season 2 can be, and so I guess my question is, do you consider Season 2 better than Season 1? Do you know what I mean?

WIGUTOW: I do. We are in the process. It’s so fresh in my mind. I’m looking at cuts and thinking about, “What can we improve?” I think it’s a singular vision in a way that Season 1 is not. Season 1 is, to your point, not hodgepodge, but it was jigsawed together. We came up with a new pilot and we came up with a new finale, and that’s kind of what you’re speaking to there, the clarity of those two things, which I thought worked, and I think Season 2 has the same. There is clarity of vision. The showrunner has been awesome and really has a point of view that we’ve executed on. Nothing’s perfect, but I do think Season 2 is quite good, and I think it’s going to be very satisfying.

Everyone was talking about the first two seasons as being one story. I’m curious, with the ending of Season 2 and now you’re going into Season 3, is Season 3 not a reboot, but a new direction for the show?

WIGUTOW: I would say it’s not a new story, and it is a continuation, but it is a new direction, and it is leaving a lot of what was built in [Seasons] 1 and 2 behind.

I don’t even know when you guys are filming. I’m assuming Marvel and Disney+ wants it as soon as possible to keep it going. Are you guys writing scripts? Are you aiming for filming early next year and the middle of next year?

WIGUTOW: I would say largely yes to all of that. We haven’t started writing anything. We’re reconvening in the next week or two as a creative trust in a writers’ room. Production targeted on a similar schedule to Season 2 would be sometime in spring.

I’m a huge fan of Daredevil, and I’m so happy that Disney and Marvel are happy with it and continuing.

WIGUTOW: Good. I appreciate it. It’s been a really, really awesome, positive experience. It’s not easy always, and it’s complicated narratively delivering what fans expect and need and want to make it work, but also telling a kind of more relevant current story. Doing those things simultaneously isn’t always easy, but I think Season 2 really does do that.

I’m very confident that Season 2 is going to be excellent. I just have a very good feeling. That’s just my gut feeling based on the beginning and ending of Season 1.

‘Tron: Ares’ Was Born from an Almost-Direct Continuation of ‘Legacy’

Tron: Ascension would have “carried all that mythology and all those characters forward almost from one day to the next.”

Moving into Tron, how did this project happen for you? Because I read you worked a little bit on Legacy, but I don’t actually know what you did on Legacy.

WIGUTOW: I did largely production work, meaning I came in, there was already a script, I knew the players involved. I’m kind of a friend of the family, as it were, at Disney. So, I did some rewrites and pre-production, some dialogue work, some scene work, and a little bit more than that in moments, going into production. But there was a script in place, and the story, and it worked really well. So, that was my contribution.

With Ares, how did this project happen for you? Did you pitch on it? Did they come to you? Talk a little bit about that genesis.

WIGUTOW: A little bit of both. I can’t remember what I was working on. I was busy at the time that Legacy came out, and they were quick to want to turn, to potentially capitalize and do a third, so there was a script that was commissioned that I was not a part of, but it was a very different story. It was very much a continuation of Legacy, and it carried all that mythology and all those characters forward almost from one day to the next.

And at a certain point, I actually came back in and did a rewrite on that script, which was pretty extensive. That script actually got a flashing green light. We were moving towards production, and then a lot of things happened in the studio and the world around us. If I’m being honest, I think part of it had to do with the release of John Carter of Mars and the release of Tomorrowland. It really changed the math and the business model a little bit, and Tron suffered from that. So, it went away.

What stuck was this character that had been, really on a smaller level, a smaller role, just the villain of that movie, which was Tron 3, the literal sequel to Legacy, was this character Ares, that, at the time, Jared [Leto] was attached to and he never let go of it. He really wanted to build a movie over time about that character. They came back to me and said, “Hey, what if we let go of all the rest of it and focus on this character? Can we build a movie around him and this character?” And that’s where that began.

Image via Walt Disney

I spoke to Joseph Kosinski, and he told me about Ascension, but I never really found out exactly how much… but I’m sort of putting it together. Ascension was the continuation, and Ares is the reworking of the Ascension script that became something else.

WIGUTOW: Honestly, yes. It got a little complicated, in part because I didn’t really have a significant pass at Ascension. And then, with Ascension, there was a hiatus in terms of chronology. Ascension really went away, and the origins of Ares, while, yes, it started with Ascension, was a single-page document that I shared and spoke to the producers about. “Here’s a movie based on Ares.” And that was a new day and a new beginning and a new script.

This ‘Tron: Ares’ Stealth Mission Was Almost a Massive War Sequence

Budget, however, required a few scale-backs.

Image via Walt Disney

I’m always curious about the what-ifs and how things change. From when you started writing to what people see on screen, did the script go through radical revisions, or was it always pretty much like, “This was my idea, and this is very close to what you’re seeing?”

WIGUTOW: Interestingly, there was a lot of work on the script throughout, and yet I see the final cut and I’m like, “That is exactly what it was.” There was definitely some enhanced character work and depth of character, all of which is super helpful and I think gives the movie some heart, but the structure of it, the story being told that we landed on however long ago it was now, really lives on. It really is the blueprint for the movie, and all of these magically smart, interesting people who’ve collaborated have made it come to life.

What is it like writing a Light Cycle chase sequence? I’m always curious how much of that scene in the movie is on the page, where you are writing it very specifically, and how much is it on the page, “Light Cycle chase, some basic stuff. Second unit will figure it out?”

WIGUTOW: Great question. A lot of it’s on the page, and where it changes and changed the most is location-wise. We had a very elaborate, very well-thought-out sequence on the page. As a writer, I’m thinking, “This is basically a motorcycle chase, but let’s add some fun to it because they can leave walls behind them, and damage therein.” But it was pretty elaborately written, and then it shifted a lot once we got to the location and they found that these roads, this alley, this pier, all that stuff, changed with the specificity of it.

Image via Walt Disney

One of the things about any movie is that you have a certain number of days of production and you have a budget. How did the script possibly get altered as a result of, “We’re only going to have 100 days,” or “We’re only going to have 80 days,” or whatever that may be? Because then things have to get reworked. Also, people might not realize that action set pieces are where the money is, so you can only have so many of these in a script like this. Talk a little bit about that aspect as well.

WIGUTOW: I mean, you’re spot-on. There was a chapter of this, in terms of rewriting as we were going, getting really close to production, where the mandate came down to, “The first number of the budget needs to drop down a number.” You know what I mean? So that means you’ve got to find a way, and that’s kind of over my head a little bit, to lose $30 million, or something like that. So, you have to look at that, to your point, not in terms of, “What if I trim the scene by half a page or what have you?” It’s like, “What’s a piece of this that can shrink dramatically or go away entirely?” So, that wasn’t all on my shoulders. I was certainly a part of that process. One of the things that wasn’t quickly targeted but really where we landed as a big inside-the-Grid sequence, that was written for many years, by the way, was a really big raid inside the Grid. That got shrunken down dramatically.

Oh, is that when Ares and the crew go in to steal stuff?

WIGUTOW: Yes. That was initially like D-Day. That was like warships landing, supported by air support and all the rest of it. That was a very big, elaborate war sequence that got minimized.

You know what’s interesting? I’ve seen the film twice now, and I could see how that sequence could go really large, but I also think it really works as just a little stealth mission going in and trying to steal, and trying not to get noticed.

WIGUTOW: Yeah, exactly. I think it works. I miss some of the fun stuff in the scope, but the movie is massive as it is. It is what it is.

Are there any Easter eggs that you have seen that you want to tease for people to look out for?

WIGUTOW: No. Not really. It’s not even an Easter egg, but if you’re a fan of the franchise and you’re familiar with some of the visuals, I think you’re going to see a little bit at the very end of the movie, what happens with Evan Peters’ character, Julian Dillinger, and who he’s meant to become going forward, should we have the opportunity to tell another version of this. But that’s the only one off the top of my head.

I definitely want to touch on when Ares goes into the ‘80s Grid. Talk a little bit about figuring that out. Was it always from the inception, “We’re going to go to the ‘80s Grid?” Because it’s a cool sequence as a fan of the original Tron.

WIGUTOW: Very much so, that was always part of the design. I don’t remember where that idea came from. I want to credit [producer] Sean Bailey, but maybe it was everybody. It was very much not a mandate, but like, “Let’s do this, and it’ll be fun. Let’s find a way to make it work and a reason for it to be, narratively.” In terms of the actual visuals, that’s kind of above my pay grade, but you get it quickly, and it’s fun to see how far the technology has come from 1982 to 2025. Just one image of Ares getting into a 1982 Light Cycle really sells it.

Again, I didn’t know that sequence was coming, and I was very, very happy. One of the things that I’m curious about is in the first two Tron movies, there is essentially one Grid, the MCP Grid, and in this one, there’s the Dillinger Grid, and there is the Flynn Grid. Can you talk about that decision or how that came about?

WIGUTOW: Again, thinking about the evolution of the online universe from 1982, such as it may have been then, or not even online, but that world inside of a CPU from then to 2025, you have all of these massive corporate entities that have their own kind of closed digital environment that they control for a lot of reasons. I think that was a lot of the thinking, and it provided an opportunity to show the juxtaposition between “Here’s a military Grid and here’s a forward-thinking, progressive gaming company Grid.”

Yep, Evan Peters Did Just “Become the New Sark”

“He’s going to rebuild it as his own new universe.”

Image by Jefferson Chacon

So Cameron Monaghan is in the beginning of the movie in that guerrilla attack. Did he have more scenes or was that just his whole thing?

WIGUTOW: That character had a little more of an arc at one point. There was a story to be told about that character. Again, he kind of goes back to what you were just speaking about, all the different Grids. We had spent at one point, narratively, more time in the nether regions of the Dillinger Grid and the cast-outs, and what that looked like. If you were a slightly damaged character with a default, you were disposable, and some of them kind of reemerged in their own, almost shantytown, and Ares had a journey through that and found some humanity out of what he experienced there. So that was part of the narrative, but again, only so much you can do.

Listen, I’d be happy watching a whole movie inside the Grid, of all the little things, but again, that’s just me.

WIGUTOW: I will say that I think part of the design of this movie was to do the inverse ratio of what 1 and 2 did and just say, “We’re going to obviously live inside the Grid, but the bulk of this movie is going to be taking the Grid out.” It’s the Tron assets, the Tron aesthetics, and things that people are familiar with, and we’re going to bring them out into our world and show what that looks like.

Image via Walt Disney

In Legacy, Flynn has a house and is what I would call alive all the time. In Ares, he’s more like a ghost in the system. Am I wrong about this? How did you figure out Flynn’s role in this movie, and was it ever something else?

WIGUTOW: His role was never anything else. I don’t think you’re wrong. He is very much, by design, the kind of ghost in the machine. I think that if you really lifted up the hood and put a gun to our heads and said, “Can you explain that?” The answer would be, “Not really.” But it feels like it works. It feels like it’s consistent with where we left him, in a way. Spiritually, he is the Yoda of the universe, so he lives on. He never had a bigger role in this.

One of the things that I was always wondering about the permanence code was, if Flynn was alive the whole time, working on stuff. Because the other way of getting the permanence code would be if Flynn’s been working on it this whole time, and Ares arrives. The permanence code in this comes out of…

WIGUTOW: Organic matter.

Yes. In Legacy, if I remember correctly, Flynn talks about Quorra’s origin, and I’m wondering how much the permanence code and Quorra’s origin tie together, if at all.

WIGUTOW: Good question. I don’t think they really do tie together, but I think there is a way in which one could argue that one is embedded in the other, and that the idea out of Legacy is almost like Field of Dreams — if you build it, they will come. We built these environments, and out of the fabric of the Grid emerges bioorganic life. That’s what Quorra was, and one could argue that the permanence code is part of her genetic coding.

Image via Disney Studios

For fans, when the Dillinger Code gets destroyed, it’s obviously been built on the MCP code, and so the Dillinger Code gets destroyed when Evan Peters’ character comes in and he sees that disc. When he sees that disc, it’s the original Tron disc, you hear that voice of Sark, and then when he is getting it, you see Sark’s helmet. It’s clear that you guys are homaging back. How much was that in the script when you were first writing and figuring out that scene? How did that get figured out?

WIGUTOW: That was by design, more or less from the beginning, as I remember. I think it was kind of in and out of the script, but it was certainly an idea that the only way for him out of this is to go back inside the Grid, and the Grid has been destroyed. He’s going to rebuild it as his own new universe and become the new Sark in a way. That’s kind of what was always the idea; whether or not it made it into the cut was the question.

This is obviously something that Disney hopes will continue. I love the world of Tron, and I’m so happy that this was made, as a fan. How much, when you guys were working on this, were you thinking about, “Okay, well, if this is a success, where are we going to go next,” and planting those kinds of seeds?

WIGUTOW: Not very much, at least for me. As the writer, I really need this story to satisfy and be not self-contained but work, because you don’t buy yourself another one unless it works as its own closed-ended story. We left, obviously, some space for a character out in the world that you can then bring back. You know he’s out there. But there was not a lot of thought about, “What’s the next one?” I certainly have some ideas, some thoughts about what’s to come if there is an opportunity, but we’re not there yet.

Tron: Ares is now playing in theaters and IMAX.

Release Date

October 10, 2025

Runtime

119 minutes

Director

Joachim Rønning

Writers

Jesse Wigutow, David DiGilio, Steven Lisberger, Bonnie MacBird

Producers

Jared Leto, Jeffrey Silver, Sean Bailey, Steven Lisberger, Emma Ludbrook