What Happened Next? - 9 Planned Movie Sequels That Were Cancelled

4. Tron 3

alien awakening
Disney

Disney had high hopes for 2010's Tron: Legacy, and while the movie was by no means a colossal failure, it just didn't hit as big - in any capacity - as the studio wanted it to.

Plans for a sequel were in place even before Legacy debuted, with a script firmly in the works. In fact, Legacy's home media release even included some Tron 3 easter eggs on the DVD/Blu-Ray. But several script rewrites, non-committal comments and casting rumours later, Tron 3 finally died when THR reported that Disney was looking to reboot the property instead.

As a result of its troubled production, plenty of Tron 3 story details have leaked out over the years. One of the earliest tidbits came from director Joseph Kosinski, who revealed the film's basic premise (via Assignment X):

"I think we will pick with where Tron: Legacy left off with Quorra [Olivia Wilde] in the real world and what does that mean and the possibilities it opens up for the next chapter. It’s that relationship between the two of them [Quorra and Sam] that’s the next step."

Then, in 2014, actor Bruce Boxleitner revealed even more details in a chat with Mandatory, insinuating the film will be set more heavily in the real world than the grid:

“That’s what I’m told, but you didn’t hear me say that. I think it’s going to be a lot about taking the company back because if you remember Sam Flynn says to Alan at the end, just before he rides his bike off into the sunrise with Quorra, says, ‘We’re going to take the company back.’ That’s not the end of the movie. That’s the beginning of the next one."

This lines up with what Kosinski told Collider in 2017, where he stated that Tron 3 would be an "invasion" movie, with "the machine coming out". He confirmed a bigger focus on the real world, mentioning that the first and third acts would be set in reality, and the second would be within Tron, or the "multiple worlds" of Tron.

Tron 3
Disney

The movie would also find Quorra, a Tron native, struggling to adapt to the real world. Tron 3 would've been a much grander movie than the first two, with the bright neon lights of the grid being melded with our own planet Earth. To be blunt, it sounds really cool, and it's a shame we never saw it.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.