Jared Leto’s Ares Brings AI to Humanity in TRON’s Next Chapter

With San Diego Comic-Con less than a week away, Disney has been dropping teasers to build hype ahead of its main SDCC presentation. On Thursday, the studio dropped the first trailer for TRON: Ares, a new film set in the legendary sci-fi franchise. Filmmaker Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) will direct the new project, which moves the TRON storyline further away from its trademark digital world and into the real one.

TRON: Legacy was the last entry in the saga to delve into the Grid, back in 2010. The film’s plot found Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of TRON: Legacy’s (Jeff Bridges) original hero Kevin Flynn. After Sam discovered the truth of his father’s disappearance and Clu (Jesse Bradford), a program and Flynn’s corrupted clone, had been running the Grid in his absence, he embarked on a mission to save his father and Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an isomorphic algorithm (ISO) being chased by Clu for deletion. In the final act, Flynn managed to foil Clu’s plan to merge the Grid with reality, and he took off with Quorra.

Development on a direct TRON: Legacy sequel was in the works soon after the 2010 film’s release. Disney greenlit the project in October that same year, with the third TRON movie intended to pick up immediately after the last film’s ending and further Sam and Quorra’s journey through the Grid. Sam would have also taken control of his father’s company, ENCOM, in the film, but little came of the project, as the studio axed the film in 2015 following reported losses on another sci-fi franchise, Tomorrowland, that year.

It would take another five years for TRON’s next development cycle to fire up. In 2020, Disney set work on a new TRON film back in motion with the project imagined as a reboot, not a direct follow-up to Legacy. While the studio had previously committed to a legacy pick-up, parts of the second and scrapped TRON: Destiny script were to be kept and put in the next film, including the character of Ares, a previously vital program and AI in the world that went by several different monikers in past scripts. Production on the film went on to face pandemic delays and stops as a result of Hollywood’s more recent union strikes. The film’s completed and is due to reach theaters in the fall.

TRON: Ares Teaser Synopsis: “Film Synopsis: “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.” The film is led by Jared Leto as Ares, Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger, and Greta Lee as Eve Kim. Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson also star. Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Flynn in this new movie, while Nine Inch Nails has signed on to score it.

New Trailer Sneak Peek: “They Are Coming Here”

The first trailer released back in April had a very similar approach, as it showed off the primary TRON visual delights — long neon lightlines, color palette, hypercars, and an overall cool, clean sense of production design and digital art design. However, it didn’t drop much context on the film’s central story beyond having Leto play an AI. However, a new teaser trailer released this week builds on the original’s concept and seems to delve more into the film’s narrative stakes and themes.

It opens with what looks like a classic tech industry keynote presentation. Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) is up on stage with a room of what is presumably a press or media crowd. He is pitching a provocative idea as he says, “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.”

However, it seems as if Dillinger may be the program’s ultimate villain when all is said and done. Ares is presented as Dillinger’s creation that he wants to weaponize and send out into the world, but the film seems to suggest that Ares may not be beholden to Dillinger in the ways he would like. He goes on a personal journey, of sorts, but he is presented as having no clear objective as he searches through the real world for something indefinable to him. At the very least, the trailer offers up Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, to serve as the potential voice of reason as Flynn appears in the virtual world and asks questions like, “A malfunctioning program who wants to live, why is that?”

TRON: Ares is still a few years out from release, with the film now scheduled to premiere in theaters on October 10, 2025.