You’d think a seasoned actor like Jeff Bridges (“The Big Lebowski”) has seen pretty much everything on set. But when it came time to do “Tron: Ares,” the star was a bit apprehensive about working with Jared Leto (“Morbius”), considering his reputation for extreme method acting.
“Tron: Ares”
“I hadn’t met him before. 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?” Bridges told Rob Lowe on SiriusXM’s podcast, “Literally! With Rob Lowe.” “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.’”
Joachim Ronning (“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”) directs from a script by Jesse Wigutow (“The Prince”) and Jack Thorne (“His Dark Materials”). Nine Inch Nails will be handling the score. It will be Disney’s third feature-length follow-up to the 1982 film “Tron” and 2010’s “Tron: Legacy.” Alongside the TV series “Tron: Uprising” which ran from 2012 to 2013 and takes place between the two existing films.
Bridges has starred in each movie as video game designer Kevin Flynn. Whereas, Leto is a new face to the franchise playing Ares, a computer program sent from cyberspace into the real world. Ares bridges this gap to complete his mission of introducing artificial intelligence beings to humans.
The cast also includes Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan, and Gillian Anderson.
Method Acting
Bridges and Lowe continued to discuss the difference between their style of acting and Leto’s.
“You, I know, are like me of the school of actor where we show up and do it. There’s not a lot of artifice around the edges,” Lowe explained. “We’ve done whatever work we need to do, we’re doing it in the quiet of our own privacy, so I can go and be Rob, and we can talk about the Lakers or whatever, and they can say, ‘five minutes,’ and we come to the set, and we do it, and then when they cut, we go, ‘Hey, you know, I went to a great Mexican restaurant last night. Then, there’s Jared Leto, who, you know, when Jared played the Joker, I have a friend who played his best friend. He was Mr. J the whole time.”
Bridges concedes that both techniques can “work beautifully.” He just wasn’t sure how to approach the set of “Tron: Ares.”
“His name was Ares in the show, and I ended up going, ‘Hey Air, what’s happening man?’” Bridges said. “And I say, ‘Is it OK if I call you Air?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, sure you can.’ Then we got loose, and it was just wonderful. I mean, we jammed, you know?”
“Tron: Ares” hits theaters on October 10th, 2025. We’ll keep you posted on updates about the project as they become available.
