In honor of the release of Tron: Legacy on DVD April 5th I’ve decided to answer a question on the minds of many sci-fi fans, which is:  Will there be a sequel to Tron: Legacy–itself the sequel to Tron, a film released 28 years ago.

I think that there definitely will be, and if I can restrain my inner Tron-love for a moment, I’ll explain why.

Reason No. 1 is how the film performed at the box office.

According to Box Office Mojo, Tron: Legacy has pulled in almost $400 million dollars ($398, 333, 397 million as of March 31st) worldwide.  With a budget of $170 million, you would think that a sequel is assured, though muddying the waters somewhat is that the marketing budget from the film has been estimated somewhere from between $120 to $170 million dollars.

On some of the genre blogs I frequent there are people that say Tron: Legacy would need to earn $500 million just to break even.  I personally don’t prescribe to that perspective, nor have I seen anything definitively that supports it.

Besides, Tron: Legacy is a special case, which leads Reason No. 2, which is that Tron: Legacy is not like other big-budget sequels.

To understand why, you would have to consider that the original Tron came out at the same time as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, a film that went on to gross almost $800 million dollars worldwide.

Tron, released at the same time, earned $33 million in the US, and while I have not seen foreign box office receipts, I suspect that it is nowhere near what ET brought in.

Considering that the original release of Tron is considered to be a failure that built a considerable cult following, there had to be some way to get people to see the sequel to a film that most of its potential fan base were too young to remember.

That being the case, it needed a large marketing budget (which I suspect is around $120 million) so that it could move beyond the status of a niche film.

Which I believe it did.

Reason No. 3 is that Tron: Legacy was stronger overseas than it was in the United States.  What this shows is that there is definitely an audience for the film, and a sequel could possibly build upon Legacy’s audience.

And perhaps the most important reason, which is No. 4, is Disney’s faith in Tron: Legacy’s director, Joseph Kosinski.  He was developing two other films for Disney, one a remake of The Black Hole, and the other a project he wrote himself called Oblivion.

Oblivion wast felt to be a good fit for Disney, so they let him shop the project to other studios, something they clearly didn’t have to do.

Seeing that the powers  to be hold Mr. Kosinksi in high regard, I suspect that little more than receipts from dvd sales will be the difference between a sequel to Tron: Legacy or not.

So, till the release of the Tron: Legacy home video April, 5th, here’s a little retro Tron action.