Jared Leto is back to falling on his face at the box office, this time in the name of Disney's latest legacy sequel: Tron: Ares. Leto is no stranger to this feeling, as his 2022 superhero film Morbius was widely panned and dismissed by audiences. The shocking twist is that Tron 3 is set to be an even bigger bomb, likely rendering the franchise dead for future storytelling in theaters.
Leto's latest big-budget outing, Tron: Ares, will reportedly earn less than Morbius, one of the most infamous comic book flops of the modern era, at the global box office. The latest figures show Tron: Ares grossing just $2.8 million in its fourth weekend overseas, a steep 55.5% drop, bringing its international total to $66.2 million. With $68.4 million earned domestically, the threequel reached a total of $134.6 million globally. This makes its projected finish to be around 150 million worldwide (at most), falling short of Morbius' $167.5 million global total, which includes $93.6 million internationally (a figure that Tron 3 won't sniff).
Tron: Ares is shaping up to be a costly underperformance and one of the year's biggest box office disappointments, with a reported production budget of $220 million. This follows middling reviews of Tron: Ares, pointing out some of the CGI and action feats, but the plot and characters struggle to draw audiences in.
This is an unfortunate result for Disney, particularly given how all its 2025 Marvel films underperformed.
Tron: Ares is the canonical sequel to 2010's Tron: Legacy, starring Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Kevin Flynn. Tron 3 follows the rivalry between ENCOM and Dillinger Systems as a digital program named Ares is sent into the real world.
Is Jared Leto a Movie Star?
One could argue that Jared Leto helped kill multiple franchises at different studios. The Tron film series is reportedly dead, despite the open ending with Leto's Ares character. It has been suggested that much of Tron 3 actually functions more as a flashy advertisement for the Disney theme park Tron rides (Walt Disney World and Shanghai Disneyland) than a story-driven cinematic experience, raising questions about how much Disney truly cares about box office results.
Meanwhile, Leto's take on DC's Joker is infamous and could be seen as a fundamental piece of the DCEU's failings, leading to the Joker and Batman characters being quickly recast and taken in new directions.
Over at Sony's Spider-Man Universe, it's hard to put all the blame on Leto's Morbius. Still, his anti-hero adventure in 2022 was an embarrassment and a sign of things to come in 2024, with Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter, marking the end of the spin-off universe.
Despite the modern view on Leto's success (or lack thereof), his resume isn't entirely grim, as he starred in Blade Runner 2049 just eight years ago and won an Academy Award in 2013 for his role in Dallas Buyers Club.
