Late Friday (August 9) at the D23 fan event in Anaheim, CA, Disney announced that Nine Inch Nails will be helming the score for the next instalment in the Tron franchise, due for release in October 2025.
Although Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have scored upward of a dozen films together to immense acclaim, Tron: Ares will mark the first film scored by the band proper and feature new NIN original songs — the group's first since 2020's Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts. The announcement was reportedly preceded by a trailer, not yet made public, that featured the band's 1989 Pretty Hate Machine track "Something I Can Never Have."
Tron: Ares — the third film in the series and follow-up to 2010's Tron: Legacy, scored by Daft Punk — is directed by Joachim Rønning and stars Jeff Bridges, Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, Gillian Anderson and Sarah Desjardins.
When Reznor and Ross appeared on the cover of GQ back in April, they mentioned a few movies among their laundry list of current projects: Challengers director Luca Guadagnino's erotic film, Queer, as well as Scott Derrickson's sci-fi feature The Gorge and an unnamed film by horror legend Mike Flanagan; which is all to say that their work on Tron: Ares was obviously being kept under wraps, so who knows what else they're scheming in secret.