Even though Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner – the third-coolest Bruce in history, fact fans – have signed on to reprise their roles as Clu and Tron, respectively, in Tron, the sequel to, erm, Tron, we all knew that Disney wouldn’t entrust their $150 million behemoth to two blokes over 50. New blood would be required – and new blood has been found.
Garrett Hedlund has been signed to play the lead role in Joseph Kosinski’s sequel to the 1982 original, having beaten out the likes of Chris Pine, Ryan Gosling and Cloverfield’s Michael Stahl-David, all of whom either met for the role or screentested.
The 24 year-old Hedlund, perhaps best known for playing Brad Pitt’s doomed pretty-boy cousin, Patroclus, in Troy, will play a man who is sucked into a computer-generated world, following in the footsteps of Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn/Clu, who’s since become CEO of a computer software giant.
It should transform Hedlund’s career, which has been idling along since Troy – he’s popped up in the likes of Friday Night Lights, Four Brothers and, almost unrecognisably, in Death Sentence.
Sean Bailey – who’s also on board Disney’s just-announced remake of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea – will produce, along with Jeff Silver and Steven Lisberger, who wrote and directed the original movie.
Oh, and just to clear up the title confusion, Disney tried out Tron 2.0, the awful Tr2N and the simple Tron 2, but have apparently opted to call the film Tron, which is even more confusing, given that Tron is now a sequel that shares the same name as the original… Don’t ask us why, we haven’t got a Clu.