Disney’s TRON: Ares Gets Stunning New Trailer Before SDCC

The future is (finally) near for TRON: Ares, which next week is set to make its world premiere at San Diego Comic-Con. Ahead of the show, Disney has released a new trailer for the next entry in the long-running franchise.

TRON: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning, will be the first TRON film to put the story’s focus on the real world as opposed to the digital world known as the Grid.

The last time viewers visited the Grid was in 2010’s TRON: Legacy, which followed Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the protagonist of the original TRON. In the final act of Legacy, Sam stopped a villainous program from the Grid, Clu, from allowing the digital and real worlds to coexist, while also managing to free Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) whom Clu was trying to locate and delete. Sam and Quorra’s story would have been continued in a planned third TRON film.

Disney greenlit the TRON sequel in October 2010, with Sam and Quorra’s story to be told as Sam took over his father’s tech company, ENCOM. Development quickly sputtered, and in 2015, the film was canceled — allegedly because of the poor performance of the sci-fi film Tomorrowland, also released by Disney.

Then in 2020, Disney resurrected the project, albeit no longer as a direct sequel to TRON: Legacy but as a reboot of its own. However, concepts and characters from the previously written scripts were retained, including Ares, an AI who had previously been a main presence in early drafts of the narrative. After the pandemic and industry delays, thanks to recent Hollywood labor strikes, TRON: Ares is finished and has been scheduled for a fall release.

TRON: Ares Synopsis: The “Biblically Strong” Artificial Intelligence Escapes Into Our World

As per Disney’s synopsis, “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission. The thrilling adventure marks humankind’s first encounter with AI beings.”

Actor Jared Leto plays Ares, with 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. Jeff Bridges will reprise his role as Kevin Flynn, and Nine Inch Nails will score the film.

Trailer Spoilers: The “Perfect Soldier” Arrives

The first trailer, released back in April, teased the TRON visuals fans had come to expect over the years, though it did not offer much clarity in terms of the film’s plot. Rønning’s film has retained those stylistic elements, and the new trailer offers much more in terms of the story.

The trailer begins with a presentation by Julian Dillinger, who, in a keynote-meets-tech-conference moment, asserts, “So much talk of AI and big tech today. Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like, and when will we get there? Well, folks. We’re not going there. They are coming here.”

Following that, Dillinger reveals his “perfect soldier” — Ares, a character the trailer frequently refers to as “biblically strong,” and also “lightning fast” and “supremely intelligent.” Daringly, Dillinger proclaims, “He’s biblically strong, lightning fast, and supremely intelligent. And if he is struck down on the battlefield…” — at which point, Dillinger smashes his CGI avatar mid-presentation — “…I will simply make you another.”

Taken as a whole, the trailer makes it clear that Dillinger is an executive confident in his ability to control and create the future of A.I. Artificial intelligence, though, may not be beholden to Dillinger’s will. As Ares finds himself freed in the real world, he is also on a mission to find something that he has yet to define. That concept, of a man-made A.I. gaining sentience of its own, will surely drive the film’s philosophical musings, especially when Kevin Flynn himself is seen in the virtual realm, musing, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

The presence of Bridges as Flynn certainly points to nostalgia bait for TRON fans, while the concept of Leto’s Ares escaping into the real world presents new angles on the sci-fi staple of machine sentience. The action will likely be large in scale, but the film also seems like it will tease intriguing questions in terms of machine intelligence.

Visual fidelity has long been a TRON staple, and that is very much still the case with Ares, as Rønning manages to balance both high-concept, visual techscapes and, in the real world, much more stripped-down, grounded elements. Throw in the score by Nine Inch Nails, and TRON: Ares should be a theatrical experience the old-fashioned way. TRON: Ares has been set to release on October 10, 2025