A regular contributor told Aint It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com) that Disney is lining up sequels to Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure, as well as a stereoscopic 3-D reboot of Tron, for release possibly in 2011. We’re not sure how accurate this information is, but we’ll be sure to dig for more information on the return of Lightning McQueen and Light Cycles.
Pixar has historically been reluctant to make sequels, save for Toy Story 2 and the 3-D Toy Story 3, which is slated to come out in June of 2010. And while Cars was a fairly big hit, it seems unlikely that it would move ahead of the Oscar-winning blockbuster The Incredibles in the sequel line. Director Brad Bird has told us that he’s hammering out some ideas for a second Incredibles adventure, which is all but inevitable.
Word came out in September of last year that Disney was planning another Tron movie with commercial director Joseph Kosinski attached. Steven Lisberger, co-writer and director of the 1982 Tron, was named as a producer, along with Live Planet’s Sean Bailey. Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, writers on the hit ABC series Lost, were reportedly working on the script.
The first Tron starred Jeff Bridges as a video game programmer who gets sucked into an arcade machine and has to fight his way through a series of gladiatorial competitions in order to find his way out. The film is best known for being the first to rely on computer animation and digital environments. The property was later made into a hit video game by Bally Midway.
Grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide and yielding a treasure trove on home video and in licensing, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has been Disney’s bread and butter for the past few years, but audience demand for Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow may have reached saturation point. Many critics thought the National Treasure property ran out of steam with the second installment, but it certainly made enough money to warrant a third.
