Whether or not you love or hate TRON: Legacy, there’s no denying that Disney is all in with their investment in the franchise. Video games, theme parks, toys and, of course, the upcoming animated series. Tron: Uprising will begin airing on Disney XD (that’s like Disney Channel for Boys) during the Summer of 2012 and it sports an impressive voice cast including Elijah Wood, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Mandy Moore, Paul Reubens, Nate Corddry, Lance Henriksen and Bruce Boxleitner, who will reprise his role as Tron. There’s also a 10-part micro-series in the works that will premiere in the Fall.
We’ve now learned a bit more about the cartoon series, including where it starts and will end. Read about it after the break.
In an interview with Box Office Magazine (with a heads up from Ain’t It Cool News), TRON: Legacy co-screenwriter Adam Horowitz said they’re treating the series “very seriously” and revealed where it’ll take place in the TRON timeline.
This animated show will take place from when Flynn is in a safe house. It’s from when Clu takes over the grid to before when Sam comes in. So if you were wondering what was the grid like before that, then watch the show.
Previously, it was announced that the main focus of the show would be a character named Beck (voiced by Wood) who would lead an uprising inside the Grid. But that’s not all, according to Horowitz, who is a consulting producer on the show along with his co-screenwriter Edward Kitsis. Horowitz said that the series would be a great opportunity to expand on many of the loose ends and storylines they couldn’t explore – but have information on – in the film.
To give you an example of how we approached storytelling sometimes is like when you’re in the End of Line club, when we first meet Castor and he’s being berated by one of the patrons saying, ‘I want an audience with Zuse.’ His name is Bartik, and there’s an entire back story we have for him. The guy with him, his name is Hopper, there’s a whole thing between the two of them, what they are doing in there, and how they got there.
It’s like over the years of developing this movie, we developed all these mythologies and all these back stories and all little tangential things. Did we have time to do the Bartik story? No. But now maybe the Bartik story is in the animated series —you know, he’s got a huge scar on his face. I want to know how he got that scar. We couldn’t sit down and write that there’s a guy with a scar on his face without knowing what the scar was. So we hope it adds to the depth of the movie.
Our intention is to try and make something that is more than just, let’s go get something. We treat TRON very, very seriously and as writers we try to have a reason and a world for everything and not all of it gets to be shown because in this particular movie, we only had two hours. [So] hopefully it fills in the blanks in and in a fun way and an intriguing way.
TRON certainly lends itself to an animated series, but the question remains, will people care about it in 18 months? Still, it seems like a cool world and story to explore. What do you think about this series?
