A question nobody has ever thought to ask before is “how ripped do you need to get to star in a Tron movie?” If you’re Jared Leto, the answer is very.
Having officially signed on to headline the third installment in the long-running franchise, the Academy Award winner is set to hit the gym hard, and you can guarantee that Bruce Boxleitner never looked like this under his jumpsuit back in 1982.
The Tron brand has existed for almost 40 years at this point, and spawned a grand total of two movies in that time. Legacy arrived 28 years after the original, and while it featured some dazzling visuals, solid worldbuilding and a banging Daft Punk soundtrack, on a narrative level it left a lot to be desired. These were matters that weren’t helped by a painfully wooden performance from Garrett Hedlund along with the de-aging technology used on Jeff Bridges that was at least five years away from being passable, and as a result looked distracting at best and terrifying at worst.
$400 million at the box office is far from a bomb, of course, but with a $170 million budget and marketing costs, Legacy‘s profit margins were razor thin. Any plans for a third movie were swiftly halted, then, and for the next decade any talk of Tron 3 was hopeful rather than realistic. However, after being attached to a role for what seemed like forever, Leto was officially announced as the star of the latest installment with Lion director Garth Davis set to get behind the camera.
Now, the 48 year-old Morbius star has revealed on social media that he’s started training for the job, and you can check out his progress below.
It could be argued that we don’t really need another Tron movie, and Leto is an actor that tends to divide opinion among audiences, but Disney seem intent to keep all of their marketable assets alive in some fashion and as such, it doesn’t come as much surprise that this one finally escaped from development hell.