The Real Reason Why Disney Greenlit Tron: Ares — And It Might Redeem Jared Leto

After weekend after weekend of red ink, Disney’s $220 million Tron: Ares may have found a lifeline — a fresh Deadline report suggests the beleaguered threequel could finally be turning the corner.
Tron: Ares was supposed to be the victory lap fans waited years for. Instead, it face-planted at the box office and turned into Exhibit A for the internet's favorite meme: Jared Leto ruins everything he touches. But a new Deadline breakdown points the finger somewhere else entirely, and yeah, it is very on brand for Disney.
Follow the money, not the memes
Yes, Ares is losing money. Deadline pegs Disney's net hit around $132.7 million after all the math: production costs, reshoots, marketing, and then subtracting tax credits and other reimbursements. The movie's budget has been floated between $180 million and $220 million, and the box office is sitting at about $103 million. Painful? Sure. Catastrophic by Disney standards? Not really.
The report's bigger swing is this: insiders say the movie existed as much to juice the company's theme parks as to revive Tron on screens. On most days at Shanghai Disneyland and at Walt Disney World in Orlando, the Tron Lightcycle run is right up there with Pirates of the Caribbean for longest lines. According to people close to the project, Ares was effectively a very expensive commercial for those rides. The claim is that whatever Disney 'lost' on the film could be made back through park revenue and sponsor money in under a year. Cold, corporate, and honestly believable.
How did we get here?
Deadline's read is that Ares didn't need any help failing. The third film in a franchise that hasn't been a reliable hit for decades was a tough sell, and hanging it on Jared Leto (yes, the Morbius guy) made it even tougher with the public. Every weekend's grosses kept reminding everyone about that $220 million budget number floating around, and the internet happily rolled with the 'Leto curse' idea — he's been blamed for dragging four different franchises into the ditch.
But inside the industry, there's a more boring explanation: there was no driving creative vision, and Leto's personal passion for Tron mostly served as a convenient engine to push a park-first strategy. The studio even went full spectacle trying to build hype — including a Nine Inch Nails laser-light show — but it didn't translate to ticket sales.
The blunt insider take
There was no specific vision, to be honest. The idea that Disney would spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a Jared Leto film that is a franchise that hasn't worked in four decades is insane.
That's from a veteran talent rep speaking to Deadline. It's harsh, but it lines up with the bigger theory: Ares wasn't built to win critics or box office weekends. It was built to keep those Lightcycle lines snaking around the block.
What the report is actually saying
To be clear, none of this absolves the movie for being the movie. It stumbled on its own. But the Deadline piece shifts the blame away from Leto-as-hex and toward the studio's priorities. If the goal was to feed the theme parks and not the theaters, then Ares did its job — even if public sentiment is torching it in the process.
The movie, at a glance
- Director: Joachim Ronning
- Writer: Jesse Wigutow
- Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges
- Preceded by: Tron: Legacy (2010)
- Runtime: 119 minutes
- Budget: $180–220 million (reported)
- Box office: $103 million
- Rotten Tomatoes: 53%
- IMDb: 6.7
Where I land
I don't think Jared Leto is movie poison, and I don't think Ares was ever set up to be a traditional win. If the strategy was theme-park-first, then the film was always going to feel weirdly hollow. That doesn't make it less frustrating for fans — just easier to understand once you follow the cash.
Tron: Ares is in theaters now. Which Tron is your favorite of the three? Tell me below.