Well here's a surprise. Given the lacklustre critical and box-office performance of Tron: Legacy, and the eerie silence in place of any news about a follow-up, you might have assumed that Disney had quietly put the project to bed. But almost two years since we last heard anything, it now turns out that Joesph Kosinski's cameras will roll on the threequel in Vancouver this autumn.
Local Vancouver newspaper Vancity Buzz got the scoop, which has since been backed up by Badass Digest. There are no story details so far, but Garrett Hedlund is confirmed as returning to the snug wetsuit.
Tron: Legacy, most felt, was visually stunning (apart from the awful CG youngified Jeff Bridges) but narratively not so cutting edge. It involved Sam Flynn (Hedlund), the son of Bridges' game creator Kevin, entering a game world much evolved from Disney's 1982 original, in search of his father. Olivia Wilde and Bruce Boxleitner co-starred, Michael Sheen made an eccentric cameo, and Daft Punk did the music.
It had nostalgia and novelty working in its favour, and still didn't quite manage to set the world alight in the way its studio Disney probably hoped. With the element of surprise now departed, Tron 3 will have to work even harder to make an impact. What's Kosinski got up his digital sleeve?
"Tron 3 delivers on the promise of Tron: Legacy, particularly its final scenes," Kosinski promised back in 2013 while doing the rounds with Oblivion. "There's a big clue there as to where we'll go with the next one. There are also some characters we establish at the beginning of Tron: Legacy who have a much larger role in Tron 3."
That sounds, as we mused at the time, as if Cillian Murphy's Edward Dillinger Jr. might have some more heavy lifting to do this time around. Although as we said earlier, only Hedlund is confirmed in the cast at this stage. Back in 2013, Kosinski was also promising IMAX, but again, those details aren't yet forthcoming.
Expect a flurry of new information in the months to come then. Production on Tron 3 is currently scheduled to start on October 5.