‘Tron’ Creator Says He’s Taking an Obi-Wan-like Role Behind the Scenes of Third Movie

As Disney ramps up production on the long-gestating Tron 3, aka Tron: Ares — adding Dahmer star Evan Peters to the threequel — the godfather of the Tron universe has given the undertaking his blessing.

Stopping by The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened in Hollywood podcast, Steven Lisberger — writer/director of 1982’s groundbreaking Tron — says he’s taken on a Jedi Master role in advising the next generation of Tron filmmakers, to borrow from another sci-fi franchise.

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“The Tron team is hard at work,” says Lisberger, 72. “They are always hard at work. It’s going to happen. My goal with these things in playing the Obi-Wan role is to say the one sentence that has an impact. I try to say something that is useful to them without getting into the weeds.”

Lisberger recalls seeking out the advice of animation elders when embarking on making the original, technically dizzying film.

“We shot a storyboard movie on Tron 1. One of Disney’s Nine Old Men was still out at the studio,” he recalls. “I was so excited to show it to him because lord knows I could have used a mentor at that point. I showed him our storyboard movie. He sat there, he watched the whole thing, and then he turned to me and said, ‘Kid — you’re on your own.’ And got up and walked out of the room.”

“So I’m trying to keep my input down to sentences but hopefully sentences that are some use to them,” he adds.

While it currently enjoys cult status and admiration among science-fiction enthusiasts, futurists and gamers alike, the original Tron debuted to muted reception, taking in $4 million on its opening weekend and going on to gross $33 million domestically on a $20 million budget.

“Some people at the studio got too excited and compared it to Star Wars,” says Lisberger. “Star Wars was dripping in nostalgia. Tron was completely avant garde. It came out at the wrong time.

“It went up against E.T. It was a little bit like the world was headed to E.T. and that was very touchy-feely and we became that computer film that didn’t appreciate the human condition. That was a problem. As time plays out, the significance of the film continues to rise. Every so often something gets made, it’s too far ahead of its time and then it takes years for it to be accepted or find its legs. That’s what happened with Tron,” he explains.

While concepts explored by the film — everything from computer security to artificial intelligence is explored — are now commonplace, it wasn’t so at the time of the film’s release.

“People do not remember how much backlash there was to computers in the early ’80s,” says Lisberger. “We were even ahead of Steve Jobs at this point. People didn’t know what the internet was. The networking that’s in the story of Tron and is suggested in the last scene, that was based on the ARPANET,” he adds, referring to the U.S. military-based internet precursor.

Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) is set to begin directing Tron: Ares in Vancouver in August.

For more on the making of Tron, listen to the full episode of It Happened in Hollywood below and be sure to follow the podcast for more deep dives into Hollywood history.

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