Disney's Biggest 2025 Flop Is Finally Finding An Audience On Streaming

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The box office isn't everything, but for a movie that cost more than $200 million to make, it's certainly incredibly important. Such was the case with "Tron: Ares," Disney's long-awaited follow-up to 2010's "Tron: Legacy," itself a sequel to the '80s cult favorite "Tron." Unfortunately, it fell well short of expectations, becoming arguably Disney's biggest flop of 2025, rivaled perhaps only by Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot's "Snow White." Though it is only a consolation prize, the long-awaited "Tron" sequel is finding its audience on streaming.

After making its debut on Disney+ on January 7, "Tron: Ares" shot to the top of the streamer's charts, currently occupying the number one spot, per FlixPatrol. It's currently sitting above both "Avatar" and "Avatar: The Way of Water," which viewers are watching seemingly to get caught up before seeing "Avatar: Fire and Ash," which recently crossed the $1 billion mark at the box office.

For director Joachim Rønning's "Ares," it was a very different story. The sequel follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares (Jared Leto), who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's first encounter with AI beings. It absolutely bombed at the box office on opening weekend, cementing Jared Leto as downright box office poison.

The movie made just $142 million worldwide, failing by a wide margin to recoup its production costs. As a result, Disney can only hope that the movie will generate revenue elsewhere in the ensuing years to help offset the losses. At the very least, it's becoming a streaming hit for them, satisfying subscribers. Though to what degree that actually eases the sting is hard to quantify.

Disney and Rønning assembled an impressive cast for the movie, including Greta Lee ("Past Lives"), Evan Peters ("American Horror Story"), Jodie Turner-Smith ("Queen & Slim"), Cameron Monaghan ("Gotham"), Gillian Anderson ("Sex Education"), and Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Flynn from the previous "Tron" movies. "Ares" also features a soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails, as added appeal.

All of that didn't matter too much upon initial release though, as critics were at best mixed on the end result. In Witney Seibold's review of "Tron: Ares" for /Film, he called it a "thoughtless sequel," saying that the "movie is quite bad." Whether or not audiences who are catching up with the movie at home agree is a moot point. The marketing and critical response couldn't convince people to see it in theaters, which is very much needed for a blockbuster of this size.

Unsurprisingly, Disney is said to be killing off the "Tron" franchise for now in the wake of this movie's failure. Perhaps there was a chance to capitalize on the relative success of "Legacy" back in 2010, but that time passed. Or, at the very least, the movie we got wasn't the movie that a lot of people were motivated to see. While the streaming success is welcome for Disney, this one still has a long way to go to truly redeem itself, given how badly it flopped.

You can also grab "Tron: Ares" on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD from Amazon.