In the latest example of title irony, Disney has decided that it’s no longer sure it wants to develop Tron: Legac****y director Joseph Kosinski’s passion project Oblivion, shoving the sci-fi concept out of the door.
It’s not the end for Oblivion, of course – Kosinski is now free to shop it around other studios, and given that the Mouse House picked it up after a fierce auction against several competing interests, there’s a chance someone else will step in to adopt the project.
Oblivion certainly has some appeal – it’s a compelling tale of a soldier stuck on a ruined Earth repairing drones that attack alien invaders who discovers a beautiful woman in a crashed spacecraft and starts to question parts of his worldview.
But the dismissal from Disney (most likely because the film doesn’t fit into its franchise-heavy, family-focused new direction), and the slightly disappointing box office returns from Legacy aren’t going to be easy obstacles to overcome.
Kosinski has been trying to get the script made since before he got the gig on Legacy. He turned the idea into a graphic novel to help boost its appeal and once Disney got involved, had William Monahan and Karl Gajdusek take passes at the script. According to Deadline, Tom Cruise even became interested at one point, though as Guillermo del Toro could tell you, even that isn’t enough these days.
Disney, however, still wants to work with Kosinski himself – the Black Hole remake is still trundling through the company’s halls and a Tron Legacy sequel is slowly approaching the grid.