The Disney+ Tron series you never got to see

Ever since Bob Iger abdicated the Disney CEO throne in preparation for retirement, he has taken on the monumental task of helping the company's streaming platform Disney+ get through its first full year of new programming. That means a whole lot of reorganization and strategizing as the streamer attempts to find its market identity. It also means some projects go to Hulu, which Disney owns majority stake in, or a project is cancelled altogether. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the latter was the fate of a surprise Tron series that was apparently in pre-production, but never publicly announced as such. Disappointing as that may be for many a cult Tron fan to see a reboot slip from their fingers, it's probably a choice made simply because it was so early in development — it had a screenwriter attached, but no other production talent like a director or any actors, so far as we know.

Tron is one of the tougher franchise nuts Disney has had difficulties cracking since the original film was released in 1982. After finding only moderate success on its release during a particularly dark time in Disney's history, Tron was shelved as a franchise concept and largely ignored by the powers that be until the tepidly received sequel release Tron: Legacy in 2010. Despite all the naysaying, there are die-hard fans of Tron, its aesthetic, and its message — enough of it for Disney to occasionally mull revisiting it, but not enough for it to be the kind of guaranteed success it demands outs of its franchises these days.

What might this Tron series have looked like? There were a couple different known vectors of opportunity.