The Hollywood Reporter
Welcome to the Grid, Evan Peters.
The actor, who generated acclaim for his portrayal of the title character in Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, has closed a deal to star opposite Jared Leto in Tron: Ares, the third installment of Disney’s technology-pushing movie series.
Joachim Ronning is directing the feature that is due to begin shooting August in Vancouver. Getting filming off the ground would be a coup for the studio, which has been trying to make a Tron 3 for over a decade and turn Tron into a bona fide brand and franchise.
Disney released the original Tron in 1982, with Jeff Bridges starring as video game designer Kevin Flynn, who is transported inside his own creation and teams up with Tron, a security program played by Bruce Boxleitner. The film was not considered a box office success but did earn two Oscar nominations. Ironically, neither was for visual effects, which is one of the aspects the movie became known for as it went on to become a cult hit.
The studio finally made a sequel in 2010, Tron: Legacy, which was directed by future Top Gun: Maverick filmmaker Joseph Kosinski. That one starred Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde and brought back Bridges. That movie, too, didn’t exactly light up the box office like the studio hoped, although it once again pushed visual effects as well as de-aging technology.
A sequel to Legacy had been in the works on and off, with the Legacy characters earmarked to return. Eventually, that was scrapped and a new direction was set.
While the two previous movies were largely set inside the world of computers and programs, the script for Ares, written by Jesse Wigutow and Jack Thorne, is said to focus on the emergence of a sentient program that crosses over into the human world that is not ready for contact.
Leto, who has been attached to the project for several years, is to play Ares, the manifestation of the program.
It is unclear who Peters would play although the script calls for a soldier in the computer world and an awkward gamer in the human world.
Emma Ludbrook, Jeffrey Springer and Leto are producing. Russell Allen is executive producing.
Peters came to many moviegoers’ attention thanks to a memorable part in Bryan Singer’s well-regarded X-Men: Days of Future Past where he played Peter Maximoff, aka the speedy hero known as Quicksilver, whom he reprised in the not-so-well-regarded X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
It’s in his TV work that he has shown his chops, however, whether it’s being part of the Ryan Murphy repertory in multiple seasons of horror anthology American Horror Story or appearing in HBO’s Mare of Easttown, the latter winning him an Emmy in the outstanding supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie category.
He earned high marks for his portrayal of serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer in the Murphy-produced true crime series and is expected to be a major player in the Emmy race now underway. Monster became Netflix’s second-most-watched series of all time when it was released last fall, and Peters won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or television film.
Peters is repped by CAA and Johnson Shapiro.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
