The first trailer for Tron: Ares has arrived. The third film in the Tron franchise will hit theaters later in 2025, over a decade since Tron: Legacy, and 40 years since the original Tron‘s release. We’ve been graced with a lot of teases and tidbits across the past year, including a few teases from star Jared Leto who plays the titular Ares. Judging from the first-look image he shared at the time and the opening to the first trailer, it would seem that Ares isn’t letting anything get in the way of his mission. The trailer reveals that the stakes have definitely be raised when a cop car is sliced in half by a Light Cycle. You can check it out for yourself in the full video below.
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The third entry in the Tron franchise has been in the works since 2010. Leto was attached to the project in 2017 and had been set for production in 2020 by director Garth Davis. He would step down in January 2023, replaced by Joachim Rønning a month later. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike would force more delays until filming finally started in January 2024.
Rønning promised a “grittier” take on Tron while speaking with Empire about the film back in November, something that the trailer appears to deliver. The trailer also gives us a solid listen to Nine Inch Nails’ music for the film, supporting the director’s stance he shared at the time.
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“With Nine Inch Nails making the music, this installment will be a little grittier, a little bit more industrial,” Rønning said. “It’s been important for me to contrast The Grid and the real world. In that sense, Nine Inch Nails lends itself perfectly into this new Tron world we are creating.”
“What I always look for in any story is a strong emotional core,” he added. “This film will probably be more emotional than people are expecting. It’s about the cost of being human.”
We also got a smidge of Jeff Bridges speaking in the trailer as Kevin Flynn, though his purpose in the plot is yet to be revealed. After the Light Cycle opening, the trailer cuts to Greta Lee’s Eve Kim watching as a massive Recognizer makes its way down the middle of a street. It passes by Gillian Anderson’s office window and is then shown hunting down Lee as she runs away from the hulking Grid vehicle.
Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger also makes an appearance and seems to be in the middle of some trouble inside the Grid. The trailer ends with the Bridges voiceover, a hero pose for Jared Leto, and the possible creation of Ares before his mission. They also hint at a massive battle between humanity and the Grid forces, with the closing scene showing the Recognizer on fire and crashing as other Grid vehicles streak across the sky.
Here’s how Disney currently describes Tron: Ares: “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 stars Leto, Bridges, Lee, Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith (Star Wars: The Acolyte), Arturo Castro (The Menu), and Cameron Monaghan (Star Wars Jedi) with Gillian Anderson (The X-Files).
Leto also serves as a producer with Sean Bailey, former president of production for Walt Disney Studios, and Jeffrey Silver (The Little Mermaid), Justin Springer (Oblivion), Emma Ludbrook (Morbius), and Steven Lisberger, the writer-director of the original Tron.
Tron: Ares speeds into IMAX theaters October 10.
