When people think of advancements in special effects in Hollywood, they typically think of movies like 1933’s King Kong, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, and James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, to name a few. However, old heads of Hollywood remember another film that helped change the visual game, Disney’s Tron. The Steven Lisberger-directed science-fiction adventure dazzled audiences with state-of-the-art digital effects, paving the way for VFX in film to show moviegoers things they’d never thought possible on the silver screen. Disney upped their game again in 2010 with Tron: Legacy, and soon, Joachim Rønning will level up the Tron Universe with Tron: Ares, coming to theaters on October 10, 2025.
The latest issue of Empire Magazine is pulling the curtain back on Tron: Ares with an in-depth discussion about filming techniques with the film’s director, Joachim Rønning. According to Rønning, ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) treats Ares as “the Holy Grail of computer graphics.” Rønning says Tron: Ares will “elevate” the Tron landscape (The Grid) like audiences never thought possible, taking the iconic world “to the next level.” Rønning told Empire the film uses motion-controlled camera movements on The Grid, giving the impression that a machine instead of a human operates the camera. “The concept was that a program is filming a program,” he explains. “So it’s shot by a robot.”
What’s Tron: Ares about? While some of the story has been revealed, little is known about the film. We know this movie will flip the typical formula of Tron films. Instead of someone getting pulled into the virtual world (as far as we know), an AI character will make its way into the real world.
Tron: Ares stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, Jared Leto as Ares, Gillian Anderson, Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger, Greta Lee as Eve Kim, Cameron Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and more. Joachim Rønning directs Tron: Ares from a screenplay by Jesse Wigutow, based on a story by David Digilio and Jesse Wigutow.
In addition to speaking with Joachim Rønning, Empire debuted two new images from Tron: Ares, which you can check out below:
