Ares’ Uses Elements From a Decade-Old Script

When Tron: Ares hits theaters in October, it’ll be the end of a 15-year roller coaster ride. The second Tron, Tron: Legacy, was released in December 2010, and almost immediately, talks began about a sequel. In that time, multiple writers (15, in fact), directors, and actors attempted to return to the Grid only to fall short. But now, it’s coming, and it’s very different from what fans expected 15 years ago, though some key elements remain.

One of the first writers brought on to pen Tron 3 was David DiGilio, who is now showrunning The Terminal List with Chris Pratt. News of his involvement broke in June 2011, and he wrote a script that followed the two leads of Tron: Legacy, Sam and Quorra (played by Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde). Those characters are, apparently, not in this new film, but DiGilio recently found out he received a “story by” credit on it anyway. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, DiGilio explained that’s because his villain, Ares, remains in the film over a decade later, and that the bones of his story remain too.

“When the movie finally got made, I heard that the title was Tron: Ares, and Ares is a character that I had created in the process as the villain,” DiGilio said. “And Jared [Leto], I believe, was attached at the time to play it. I don’t know the full process, but he may have also been one of the champions who kept it going. And over time, Ares morphed from being the villain to being the title character.”

“Once it got made, Disney sent out, via the WGA, the notice of tentative writing credit,” he continued. “So I saw that I was sharing ‘story by’ with Jesse [Wigutow] and that Jesse was getting ‘screenplay by,’ and I was thrilled. But, of course, you end up in arbitration when you have 15 writers, and the positive out of that experience was reading the script and getting to see that the foundation remained. The foundational structure remained, even if Sam and Quorra had moved on. We no longer had those actors under option, and a new wonderful cast is in there now. But that overarching story remained the same. So I was really happy to share that credit with Jesse, and I’m fired up to see the movie.”

So it sounds like the plot of Tron: Ares, which deals with companies fighting over bringing digital elements from the Grid into the real world, was in DiGilio’s original script with Ares as the villain. Now, Ares remains, but more as the hero, in the bones of that same story. Hence, he received story credit 14 years later.

We’ll have much, much more on Tron: Ares in the coming weeks. It opens October 10.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.