The long-awaited return to The Grid isn’t far off, as the long-anticipated Tron: Ares is among the many tentpole releases slated for the 2025 movies schedule. However, in addition to most of the Ares cast being comprised of new faces, the sequel will also be lacking Daft Punk, the electronic music duo who composed Tron: Legacy, but split in 2021. While I wish we lived in a world where Daft Punk was producing the music for Ares too, director Joachim Rønning’s latest tease for the upcoming Disney movie has me hyped.
With Daft Punk out of commission, Tron: Ares scoring duties were handed to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a.k.a. the men who comprise Nine Inch Nails. Although this duo will take some cues from Daft Punk for this new movie’s soundtrack, Rønning informed Empire that Nine Inch Nails’ music are a good fit for the vibe Ares is going for, saying:
With Nine Inch Nails making the music, this installment will be a little grittier, a little bit more industrial. 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 that we are creating.
Although Tron: Ares takes place in the same universe as the first two Tron movies, and Jeff Bridges will be back as Kevin Flynn, for the most part it’s meant to kick off a fresh start for the franchise. Jared Leto stars as the title Ares, a program who’s sent from the digital world to the real world for a dangerous mission. This will mark humanity’s first contact with AI beings, which leads me to wonder what happened to Olivia Wilde’s Quorra, the “isomorphic algorithm” who left The Grid with Garrett Hedlund’s Sam Flynn at the end of Legacy, but that’s a discussion for another time.
More importantly, I’m excited to hear how Nine Inch Nails’ music will reflect Tron: Ares’ darker tone and how it contrasts between what we see in The Grid and what goes down in the real world. That being said, Joachim Rønning also mentioned that in the midst of the AI vs. reality conflicts, the movie will still have a human core. In his words:
What I always look for in any story is a strong emotional core. This film will probably be more emotional than people are expecting. It’s about the cost of being human.
Jeff Bridges and Jared Leto are joined in Tron: Ares by Evan Peters, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minaj, Arturo Castro and Gillian Anderson. Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne wrote the screenplay. Production began in January and wrapped in the beginning of May. While Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are no strangers to scoring moves, Ares marks the first time that they’re composing music together under the Nine Inch Nails name.
Tron: Ares hits theaters on October 10, 2025. Stream the first two Tron movies, as well as the animated series Tron: Uprising, with a Disney+ subscription.