After lots of speculation from cast, crew and fans, Disney is finally moving forward on a sequel to last winter’s TRON: Legacy, itself a sequel to the studio’s groundbreaking 1982 science-fiction adventure TRON. The studio has announced that they have hired screenwriter David DiGilio to begin work on a third installment in the franchise.
If Disney has seemed to be slow in moving forward on a sequel to last winter’s TRON: Legacy, it is not without good reason. In most cases, the $400 million gross TRON: Legacy pulled at the worldwide box office would be an automatic trigger for development of a sequel. But TRON: Legacy is not most cases. It was a fairly expensive film, budgeted at $170 million, plus it had a massive advertising campaign and years of development costs it needed to recoup as well. This leaves TRON: Legacy a more modest hit than one would normally assume.
The Hollywood Reporter, who broke the news of DiGilio’s hiring, has been told that the studio is actually of leery of moving forward too quickly on a theatrical sequel until it sees how well its animated spinoff TRON: Uprising performs on their Disney DX cable outlet. The show, which is set between the first and second TRON films for you continuity geeks, will feature the voices of Elijah Wood, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Lance Henriksen and TRON star Bruce Boxleitner and is set to premier next year.
But who is David DiGilio? Worryingly, the only produced feature on his resume is the dog movie Eight Below. However, he reportedly is a graduate of Disney’s writers program and has just recently sold a science-fiction series pitch to Showtime called Last H.O.P.E., so there is at least reason to be cautiously optimistic.
