Ares; Joachim Rønning Helm Jared Leto Sci-Fi Sequel – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: A new installment of Tron is coming back online. The Dish hears that Disney is in early negotiations to set Joachim Rønning to direct Jared Leto in Tron: Ares. The film is crewing up, eyeing an August start date in Vancouver.

Deals aren’t complete yet, but this would mark the fourth collaboration between Disney and the Norwegian filmmaker who helmed Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. He has wrapped for the studio the Daisy Ridley-starrer Young Woman and the Sea, about the daring journey of Gertrude Ederle, a New York teen who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Jeff Nathanson scripted it, and Jerry Bruckheimer produces with him.  

Now it’s on to the Disney sci-fi franchise, which began with the 1982 film that starred Jeff Bridges and was set inside the computer program called the Grid, where a computer hacker is abducted and forced to participate in gladiatorial games. The first one wasn’t more than a cult favorite, though its special effects were seen as game-changing at the time. That following swelled around the film in years to come as it played on cable only helped grow its popularity, to the point where Disney decided to move forward with a sequel, Tron: Legacy, in 2010, with Bridges reprising his role and Garret Hedlund and Olivia Wilde joining the franchise. That film grossed $400 million globally, and Disney has been trying to figure out how to continue the franchise since.

The studio got close in 2017 with Leto. Now it will be in the hands of Rønning, who early on broke into Hollywood co-directing with Espen Sandberg Kon-Tiki, the 2013 film that was nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar and chronicled Thor Heyerdah’s epic 4,300-mile crossing of the Pacific Ocean on a balsawood raft in 1947. Young Woman and the Sea isn’t slotted yet, but it has been testing strongly.

The Tron: Ares script is by Jesse Wigutow and is considered the sequel to Tron: Legacy, which was directed by Top Gun: Maverick‘s Joe Kosinski.

Sean Bailey and Sam Dickerman are the execs.

The producers are Justin Springer (Tron: Legacy), Leto, Jeffrey Silver and Leto’s Paradox partner Emma Ludbrook.

Leto, who next will co-star in Disney’s Haunted Mansion, is repped by WME and attorney Barry Hirsch; Ronning is UTA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and attorney Warren Dern.