Last summer, fans of TRON and the follow-up TRON Legacy were dealt a tough blow when the developing TRON 3 was declared dead at Walt Disney Pictures. The sequel was said to be called TRON: Ascension with director Joseph Kosinski back behind the camera and Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde reprising their roles as Sam Flynn and Quora. Thousands of fans signed a petition in an attempt to get Disney to reconsider, but it doesn’t appear to have done any good. However, that doesn’t mean TRON 3 is out of the realm of possibility, at least according to one of the film’s producers.

Reignite your fire for any hope of seeing TRON 3 after the jump.

Speaking with ScreenRant, producer Brigham Taylor (who worked on The Jungle Book for Disney this year) said that he still has hope that TRON 3 will actually come together at some point:

I always hope for that. I just had a wonderful visit to Shanghai, where they have an amazing attraction based on Tron Legacy. The designers just did such an amazing job creating the feeling of stepping onto The Grid, and that indelible visual world that Lisberger created and Kosinski explored… and I think there’s a real stickiness to that that I hope can grow into a film or whatever else. So I don’t know what I’d ‘hint’ at other than that I hope for that, and that there’s obviously been conversations.

This sounds as if Taylor is being a little optimistic, rather than basing his hopes on any substantial behind-the-scenes developments. That means that Disney isn’t expressly against making TRON 3, but now is just not the right time. The studio is having plenty of success with their live-action remakes of classic movies, so maybe revisiting TRON will be something that’s better after more time has passed. After all, TRON Legacy arrived 28 years after the original TRON, so anything is possible.

However, one hiccup could be getting Bruce Boxleitner back on board for another round. The actor who played the titular program from the original film (as well as Kevin Flynn’s trusted colleague Alan Bradley) came back for TRON Legacy, but when he was previously asked about any hope of TRON 3 happening, he said:

I don’t really care anymore. I’m done with it. I’ve moved on. I hate to say that but it’s been too up and down for me. I would rather not just keep going. I don’t want to repeat my career anymore.

As a supporter of TRON and its revival for years, Bruce Boxleitner sounds like he is just sick of having his heart broken by having these projects die out. Whether it’s TRON 3 or the short-lived animated series which he was also part of, it appears Disney just didn’t have the patience to stick with it. Boxleitner had is own theories as to why:

I’ve got a feeling they’re going to play it safe with their old [formula]. I mean, Tim Burton’s doing Dumbo. They’re going to make live-action out of their old animated classics. Apparently, that was successful. They also have Star Wars. Let’s not neglect that, and Marvel. Maybe they just felt they had enough of that sci-fi. We were the only real science fiction. Star Wars is fantasy, sword and sorcery fantasy with a spaceship. Marvel is superhero comics. Star Wars, yes, is science fiction. There’s fantasy elements as well, but Marvel is not. It’s comic books. It’s really not sci-fi. It’s not thinking science fiction. Maybe they decided they don’t want to do science fiction.

Disney certainly has enough on their plate without trying to keep their own sci-fi franchise alive, but I don’t think it’s because they’re not interested in the genre. Maybe some more time needs to go by before there’s renewed interest in TRON again.