The long-awaited third entry in the Tron franchise is finally heading into production. Six years after it was first announced that Jared Leto was in talks to star in a Tron project called Tron: Ares, the movie was all set to start filming last August – but then it had to wait out the writers and actors strikes. With those strikes over, the production is ready to go now – and Deadline reports that The X-Files star Gillian Anderson has signed on to join the cast. Details on the character she’ll be playing have not been revealed.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales director Joachim Rønning is at the helm of Tron: Ares. In addition to Leto and Anderson, the film also stars Evan Peters (Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Cameron Monaghan (Gotham), Sarah Desjardins (Yellowjackets), and Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim). We’ve also heard a rumor that Cillian Murphy might be reprising his Tron: Legacy role to be the villain in this film. 

Scripted by Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne, Tron: Ares is said to tell the story of the emergence of a sentient program that crosses over into the human world that is not ready for contact. Leto is playing Ares, “the manifestation of the program.” As Deadline puts it, Ares is “a fictional character who crosses over from the world of videogames to planet Earth.”

For twenty-eight years, director Steven Lisberger’s cult classic Tron was a standalone sci-fi adventure. Then in 2010 Joseph Kosinski took fans back to the world of Tron with the film Tron: Legacy – and since then things have been a bit messy. Kosinski wanted to make a third Tron film, to be called Tron: Ascension, but Disney cancelled the project when their movie Tomorrowland underperformed. Apparently the script for Tron: Ascension would have featured a character named Ares… and somehow the idea for that character has evolved into Tron: Ares. Kosinski had said that he had nearly given Leto a cameo in Tron: Legacy, in the End of Line club where Lisberger did make a cameo.

Leto is producing Tron: Ares with Emma Ludbrook and Jeffrey Springer. Russell Allen serves as executive producer.

Are you interested in Tron: Ares? What do you think of Gillian Anderson joining the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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