TRON: Ares director says Nine Inch Nails’ score makes the film “grittier” and “more industrial”

A couple of months on from announcing their involvement with 2025’s TRON: Ares, it has been teased how Nine Inch Nails are impacting the vibe and feel of the movie (and we absolutely can’t wait).

Speaking with Empire, director Joachim Rønning has revealed that the follow-up to 2010’s TRON: Legacy – which was soundtracked by Daft Punk – will have a “grittier” feel, and that’s thanks in part to the fact that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are working on it.

“With Nine Inch Nails making the music, this instalment will be a little grittier, a little bit more industrial,” Joachim shares. “It’s been important for me to contrast The Grid and the real world. In that sense, Nine Inch Nails lends itself perfectly into this new TRON world that we are creating.”

The director also adds that, “What I always look for in any story is a strong emotional core. This film will probably be more emotional than people are expecting. It’s about the cost of being human.”

A brief synopsis for the movie – which is due out on October 10 – reads: “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.”

Not too much else has been unveiled just yet, though we do know that Jared Leto will be playing the titular Ares. And according to co-star Jeff Bridges, the Thirty Seconds To Mars frontman adopted his infamous process of method acting for the film.

“I hadn’t met him before,” Jeff said on the Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter). “I’m saying, ‘What’s it gonna be like?’ because he was also a producer of the show, big fan of the original, working on it for 10 years. I came in, and you know how each set has a different vibe? There was an interesting vibe on this. I said, ‘How’s Jared? How’s he working?’ ‘He’s all right. You know, we call him Ares, you know, so he goes by his name,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’”

In other NIN news, the band also did the music for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which is out soon, while Trent told GQ back in April that working on soundtracks had “managed to make Nine Inch Nails feel way more exciting than it had been in the past few years. I’d kind of let it atrophy a bit in my mind for a variety of reasons.”

“I do feel excited about starting on the next record,” added Atticus. “I think we’re in a place now where we kind of have an idea.”

Read this: Trent Reznor: “The Downward Spiral beat the shit out of me”