Latest news with #TronAres
Geek Tyrant
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
TRON: ARES Heads to Hall H at Comic-Con, but the Spotlight Comes with Controversy — GeekTyrant
With Marvel Studios sitting this year's Hall H out, Disney is shifting the spotlight to Tron: Ares . According to TheWrap, the long-awaited sequel will be the company's flagship presentation at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, and that's a big deal, both in terms of fan anticipation and the complicated conversation that now surrounds the film. Tron: Ares stars Jared Leto as the titular program, and he's the face of this next chapter in Disney's decades-spanning digital frontier. But Leto's involvement now brings a heavier context. Earlier this month, AirMail published a detailed report in which multiple women accused the actor of inappropriate and sexual misconduct, including allegations that some incidents occurred when they were underage. One source told the outlet that his behavior 'has been an open secret for a long time.' Leto has denied the allegations. Meanwhile, Disney and Amazon MGM Studios, who are also working with him on Masters of the Universe , where he's set to play Skeletor, have remained silent. It's unclear whether Leto will appear on the Hall H stage, or if Disney will shift the focus to other cast members like Greta Lee, Cameron Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, and returning legacy star Jeff Bridges. Given that Tron: Ares hasn't had much marketing presence since its teaser trailer, Comic-Con would be the obvious place to drop something major, assuming Disney decides to stay the course. There's still a lot of mystery around the movie itself, but it's currently scheduled for release on October 10. With SDCC running July 24–27, we'll soon see how Disney navigates the mix of fandom hype and real-world controversy that now surrounds this title. Either way, Tron: Ares is set to be one of the biggest, and possibly most talked-about films of the convention.
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Tron: Ares' is Disney's Big Hall H Movie for San Diego Comic-Con
Marvel may be skipping San Diego Comic-Con's famous Hall H panel this year, but Disney's reportedly got Tron: Ares showing up in its stead. According to TheWrap, the sci-fi sequel will get a panel during the annual pop culture convention. That would be noteworthy on its own, but it takes on further significance owing to its lead star, Jared Leto, who plays the titular Ares program. In early June, AirMail published a report wherein multiple women accused the Morbius and House of Gucci actor of inappropriate and sexual misconduct, some of which reportedly happened when they were underage. One woman speaking to the outlet claimed his behavior 'has been an open secret for a long time.' Leto subsequently denied the allegations, and there's been equal silence from Disney and Amazon MGM. The latter studio is distributing 2026's Masters of the Universe, where he'll be portraying He-Man's nemesis, Skeletor. TheWrap's report doesn't disclose what Ares stars will show for Hall H, which also stars Greta Lee, Cameron Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Jeff Bridges. Marketing for Tron: Ares has been nonexistent since its first trailer, but SDCC often comes with big, attention-grabbing trailers. Disney likely has (or had) one ready for Hall H, but his allegations might throw a wrench in those plans and other parts of its marketing. Tron: Ares releases October 10 in theaters, and San Diego Comic-Con runs July 24-27. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The problem with Jared Leto
Disney, we have a problem. Five months out from the release of Tron: Ares, the studio's $200 million sequel to the beloved Eighties sci-fi movie, one of the project's stars, Jared Leto, has been engulfed in a #MeToo scandal. An Oscar-winning actor and frontman of the band 30 Seconds To Mars, Leto, has been accused by nine women of inappropriate behaviour – including claims his conduct was 'predatory, terrifying and unacceptable'. Leto has 'expressly denied' the accusations reported by Air Mail. They include an assertion by one woman that Leto approached her in 2006 when she was 16 and he was 35. She says Leto, who was seated in an LA cafe with then-19-year-old actor Ashley Olsen, grabbed the woman by the arm. 'I looked down, and it was Jared Leto,' she said, adding: 'We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.' 'The conversations turned sexual' She continued that Leto called her home a few days later. 'I don't know if he was on drugs or what … It was the weirdest, grossest voice … [But] for me, it's Jared, you know?..the conversations turned sexual. He'd ask things like: 'Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a d---?'' (Leto 'has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years,' the actor's representative told Air Mail.) These and other accusations make for grisly reading – another woman recalls how, once, when she was 18, Leto 'suddenly pulled his penis out and started masturbating'. With Leto insisting on his innocence, it remains to be seen how the controversy will play out. Still, Disney executives will surely thinking towards damage limitation ahead of Tron: Ares. The film's plot has been kept largely under wraps, but given that Leto is to play the eponymous artificial intelligence 'Ares', removing him from the film would be no easy task. Following the failure of a previous Tron spin-off – 2010's Tron: Legacy – the studio may wish it could just hit AI Overview Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the entire franchise. The stakes are high for Disney as it tries to move beyond a succession of flops, including the disastrous Snow White live-action reboot which is estimated to have left the Magic Kingdom $115 million in the red. Factoring in associated marketing costs, it is believed Tron: Ares would need to generate $400 million just to break even. But who would want to see the third movie in a fading series whose title character is played by potential persona non grata, Jared Leto? Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said, 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken the Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (The camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant would die by suicide when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bag on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when the Oscar-winning actor learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV +'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars , albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects is now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar wiz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may regret come to regret that line.
