Sci-Fi Storm

The news last month that stars Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde along with director Joseph Kasinski were in for a third installment of Tron, gave hope even after several years had already passed since Tron: Legacy, but Disney said today that it never officially gave a green light for the project, and has in fact pulled it from the development slate.

No specific reasons were given, but given the relatively soft worldwide box office ($400 million against an approximately $180 million budget, not including marketing), and the subsequent failure of the animated Tron: Uprising, and with expected blockbusters from Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the next several years, Disney probably sees the slate pretty clogged with high budget features with likely better returns.

Update: There have been various reports that this was due to the poor opening of Tomorrowland, but there is no real reason they would be connected.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Tron Legacy stars Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, along with director Joseph Kasinski, will return for Tron 3.

It is unclear if the movie has been given a green light yet by Disney, but it does appear that they are aiming to start filming this Fall in Vancouver.

Tron Legacy showed an updated, higher resolution world of that introduced in Tron, the 1982 film that wasn’t a success financially but was cutting edge and became a iconic cult hit, often cited as an influence by other filmmakers. The second film picks up decades later, where Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has been missing for some time, and his son (Hedlund) heads into the system to find him…

Tron Legacy was more of a success, garnering $400 million worldwide, but development on a followup has been slow thus far.

We first got a glimpse of the animated TRON: Uprising last week with the TV preview spot: Now you can check out the full preview below! TRON: Uprising fills in on what happened on the Grid after the original movie that led up to the events of Tron: Legacy, and premieres on Disney XD in June.
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Disney XD will premiere the animated TRON: Uprising sometime in June, and you can catch the recently release TV spot right here.

Done in an anime style, TRON: Uprising will fill in some of the happenings between the original movie and Tron: Legacy, and features the voice of original Tron Bruce Boxleitner, who says that Tron will be more “badass” than the original.

Finally, something on Disney XD that I might watch instead of my kids…
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No one at Disney is saying a word, but Bruce Boxleitner is. While signing autographs at the recent D23 Expo in Anaheim, the actor who played the title character said that Tron 3 is “already a done deal…it’s already in the works.” He even said that it would likely come out in 2013, but stepped back a bit and said it takes a while to make a movie. 2013 seems rather ambitious for something that the only thing we know about is that it has a writer (David DiGilio, Eight Below).

Before then, we definitely get the animated Tron: Uprising next year, and they might want feedback on that before a full green light on production.

The first trailer for Tron: Uprising, the animated show being developed for Disney XD, has been released. If you liked the look of Tron: Legacy, you’ll like the look of this as it is taken right from the movie, but it looks like there is a touch of anime style as well for the characters. The story appears to be a prequel to Legacy, about an uprising that took place before the movie. It was good to here Bruce Boxleitner’s voice as Tron – perhaps he’ll get more lines than he did in the movie as well. Tron: Uprising should debut in the summer of 2012.

Just a quick recap of any remotely genre related awards gained at last night’s Oscar festivities, beyond the periodic Hugh Jackman/Wolverine references: Inception was the big genre winner, taking Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing; Queen Amidala – or more accurately, Natalie Portman – took home the Best Actress award for her role in Black Swan; Toy Story 3 won Best Animated Feature, as well as Randy Newman taking the Best Original Music, for the TS3 song, “We Belong Together” (and gave on of the best acceptance speeches of the night); Alice In Wonderland won for Art Direction and Costume Design; and Wolfman won for Makeup (it didn’t have much competition). Tron: Legacy went home with nothing, having only had one nomination in Sound Editing – inexplicably not nominated for at least Visual Effects. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 also received none, but was the subject of an interesting musical montage thanks to AutoTune…

Side note: Star Wars: The Clone Wars fans may have heard a familiar voice. Tom Kane, who narrates the beginning of each episode, was the announcer.

The list of nominees for the 37th Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films Awards (better known by the much shorter Saturn Awards) has been released. Leading the film categories is Inception, with 9 nominations, followed by Let Me In and Tron: Legacy, each with 7. On the TV side, The Walking Dead takes 6 nominations, with Fringe and Lost each taking 5.

See the whole list below – the awards will be handed out in June.
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I finally got to see Tron: Legacy. There have been a lot of polarized reviews of the movie (it’s currently a 49% on the Tomatometer), and I have often heard about its lack of a plot – there was a plot, but there were plenty of flaws as well. But that doesn’t make it an unenjoyable experience.
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I’ve been hearing many polarized opinions about Tron: Legacy, from a special effects-laden visual spectacular with zero plot to a thousand-fold better story than the original – alas, my own opinion won’t be formed until after the holiday weekend due to scheduling. But regardless of opinions, the facts show that people are watching it – to the tune of $43.6 million domestic over opening weekend, including a record 25% of that coming from IMAX showings. This was far over the #2 debut of the hybrid live action/CGI Yogi Bear, which took in $16.7 million on what is being considered a soft weekend at the box office.