page_title: Tron: Legacy
section_title: Conception
hierarchical_section_title: Tron: Legacy / Production / Conception
caption_attribution_description: English: Joe Kosinski at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego
context_page_description: Tron: Legacy is a 2010 American science fiction action film directed by Joseph Kosinski, in his feature directorial debut, from a screenplay written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, based on a story by Horowitz, Kitsis, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. It is a sequel to the 1982 film Tron, whose director Steven Lisberger returned to produce. The cast includes Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner reprising their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley, respectively, as well as Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, James Frain, Beau Garrett and Michael Sheen. The story follows Flynn's adult son Sam, who responds to a message from his long-lost father and is transported into a virtual reality called "the Grid," where Sam, his father, and the algorithm Quorra must stop the malevolent program Clu from invading the real world.
  Interest in creating a sequel to Tron arose after the film garnered a cult following. After much speculation, Walt Disney Pictures began a concerted effort in 2005 to devise Tron: Legacy, with the hiring of Klugman and Sternthal as writers. Kosinski was recruited as director two years later.
context_section_description: Plans for creating Tron: Legacy began to materialize in 2005, when Walt Disney Studios hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal as writers for the film. The two had recently finished writing the script for Warrior. According to Variety columnist Michael Fleming, Klugman and Sternthal felt "that the world has caught up to Lisberger's original concept." Klugman said of the precedent film: "It was remembered not only for story, but a visual style that nobody had ever used before. We are contemporizing it, taking ideas that were ahead of the curve and applying them to the present, and we feel the film has a chance to resonate to a younger audience."
  In 2007, Disney began to negotiate with Joseph Kosinski to direct Tron: Legacy. Kosinski admitted that at the time, he was not keen on the idea but it later grew on him as time progressed. Kosinski was involved in a meeting with Bailey, president of Walt Disney Pictures. "Disney owns the property, Tron," Bailey stated. "Do you know it? Are you interested? What would your take be? In a post-Matrix world, how do you go back to the world of Tron?" Kosinski wanted to embrace the general ambiance of the film, and wished to not use the Internet as a model or use a formula emulative of The Matrix film series. As neither individuals were in equal agreement on choosing a perspective to conceive the film, Kosinski asked Bailey to lend him money in order to create a conceptual prototype of the Tron: Legacy universe, which was eventually presented at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International. "So, we went into Disney," he recalled, "and I told them, 'We can talk about this all day, but in order to really get on the same page, I need to show you what this world looks and feels like. Give me some money and let me do a small test that will give you a hint for a couple minutes of it, and see what you think.'"
  A graduate of Columbia University's architecture school, Kosinski's knowledge of architecture was pivotal in conceptualizing the Tron: Legacy universe. His approach in cultivating a prototype was different from other film directors because, according to Kosinski, he came "from a design point of view"; "Some of my favorite directors come from outside of the film business, so that made my approach different from other directors, but a design background makes sense for a movie like this because the whole world has to be made from scratch." Lisberger would later state that he left the sequel to a different production team because "after thirty years I don't want to compete with myself," and to showcase how the next generation dealt with the themes contained in Tron - "If I brought my network in, it would be a little bit like one of those Clint Eastwood movies where all the old guys go to space." Lisberger added that "I dig this role of being the Obi-Wan or the Yoda on this film more than being the guy in the trenches," stating that unlike Kosinski his age was a hindering factor - "I cannot work sixteen hours a day staring at twenty-five monitors for most of that time."
caption: Kosinski, who sought to avoid the formula used in The Matrix, developed a prototype of the universe of Tron: Legacy in its early stages of production.
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