Why ‘Tron: Ares’ Crashed And Burned, ‘Roofman’ So-So At The Box Office

Disney’s legacy sequel Tron: Ares crashed and burned at the box office this weekend, while Roofman fell below estimates but still has a little room to grow as indie counter-programming in the coming weeks. The reasons for Tron 3’s failure aren’t hard to see.

Tron: Ares By The Numbers

The $60 million global bow for the third Tron picture means the film faces the worst-case scenario, where it’s (unrealistic) hopes lies on roughly 60% weekly holds for the entirety of its run just to reach perhaps $225 million.

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But the reality is that Tron: Ares faces a likely $190 million outcome or lower, without big over-performing assists from China and Japan later this month. But even a breakout performance in those markets and record weekly holds would still likely result in at most a $200 million outcome at this point.

I’m currently expecting Tron: Ares to finish right around $190, give or take a few million bucks, with a low-end of about $170 million.

It seems like Tron: Ares lost the narrative of what made the franchise unique, the entire point of it’s concept: what if you were actually inside a video game? Instead, it asks, “What if video game stuff happened in real life?” But we’ve already seen that a bazillion times in sci-fi and fantasy films. They don’t even go for an audacious concept like, “What if our whole world got pulled into the video game?” opting instead for just taking the cool big machines and costumes from video games and dropping them into our world.

Which is conceptually closer to an endless library of sci-fi/fantasy/blockbuster movie concepts than to the ambition that made the original Tron so great (and even elevate the mixed Tron: Legacy). With Tron: Ares, it’s about getting the action and machines into our world and watching them knock over more buildings.

To matter, however, it requires viewer investment in characters, as there isn’t much to invest in honestly -- including Leto’s titular Ares, to whom the actor brings an emotionally bland approach in favor of clichéd action posturing, which plays exactly how it sounds and is why audiences are exactly as uninvested as you’d expect.

As an extended music video full of cool imagery and supersized video game action, it might be entertaining to those expecting nothing more. But that isn’t enough for most theatergoers in today’s marketplace, not even with the name Jared Leto on the posters.

I joke, but building a big-budget franchise sequel around a performer whose last nine years of pictures haven’t lit the box office on fire, nor earned him much praise of note, and whose public controversies and sexual assault accusations published this summer by Air Mail add to the reasons it’s hard to understand Disney’s choice to proceed with this project.

While Leto’s lack of theatrical draw for big-budget franchises and the lack of much built-in fanbase or audience awareness around the Tron series are big negatives for Ares already, probably the biggest problem it faces is the fact it’s not first and foremost a family film with kids in mind. This is the dominant box office paradigm now, as I’ve explained previously at length,, and the only things breaking through that into top-tier box office are films that appeal to the kids and parents equally. If they do prioritize parents in the family audience, then kids are still a not-too-distant second.

The three highest grossing films, five of the top six-highest grossing movies, and six of the top 10 grossing films of 2025 so far are made with kids as the primary audience. Two more are either equally appealing to kids and parents, or targets parents first but kids second. Only two of the current top-10 grossing movies this year are specifically adult-audience releases: F1: The Movie and Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

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And after Wicked: For Good, Zootopia 2, and Avatar: Fire and Ash arrive this holiday season and bump the bottom three entries out of the top-10, the count will jump to seven child-first films, two equally kids-and-parents films, and one adult-audience film.

If we step back even further, twelve of the top-25 highest grossing films of 2025 will be child-first movies, another six will be for kids and parents roughly equally or parents followed closely by kids (still part of overall family group attendance), plus seven more films will be for adult audiences. And all but two of those adult films will be horror movies.

Tron: Ares doesn’t really fit as child-focused, it’s not child-parent focused, it’s not parent-focused but with kids close behind, and it’s not in the primary adult-skewing genres to break through and make the top tier of the charts. It’s not that a big sci-fi action movie that’s mostly eye candy can’t be an entertaining popcorn flick for families, it’s that it’s not a brand associated with family entertainment or with being in the elite tier worth average audiences’ hard-earned money.

So the Tron franchise was never positioned for the type of targeted appeals it would need to break out in the modern "post-Covid" era (i.e. the era of ceasing to do much at all to mitigate the spread and damage of the pandemic) at cineplexes. And it certainly wasn’t going to move in that direction with a Leto-led mid actioner targeted squarely at fans of the franchise.

Roofman, on the other hand, is an expertly-directed terrific film with a cast who all elevate an already great screenplay based on a true story. Sadly, so far the film isn’t gaining widespread awareness, but hopefully the soft $8 million opening leads to strong word of mouth and continued adult turnout. The low budget of $15-20 million and longterm upside from PVOD and pre-sales means the bar for moderate box office success isn’t very high. But the film deserves a much better turnout, and I hope it gets it.

With the only other counter programming worth mentioning being One Battle After Another, which is now on the back side of its theatrical release, Roofman’s low sub-$20 million budget means it can at least cover most of its costs with a few weeks of decent holds from good word of mouth and grownups looking for counter programming, which should help as it continues to roll out in additional global markets later this week and through the rest of October and November. Even just a few award nominations will help it, and boost its home entertainment audience later.

The rest of October sees The Black Phone 2 next weekend and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere the following weekend, so it’s not devoid of newcomers to the weekend charts. But will remain relatively soft through the first few weeks of November with Predator: Badlands, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, and The Running Man all vying for breakout potential (any of them could, from early looks at them), before the back half of the month brings Wicked: For Good, Zootopia 2, and 5 Nights At Freddy’s 2.

Before those big family-focused Disney sequels arrive for Thanksgiving, then, there are five and a half weeks for some of these pictures to make their pitches to what little audience is bothering to show up until the heavy hitters arrive to close out the year. Roofman likely isn’t going to do any significant business, but during these next few weeks I do hope it finds its audience and doesn’t get lost in the award season shuffle later.

Tron: Ares meanwhile isn’t doing any significant business either, but it needed to, and the remaining weeks until Thanksgiving might help it pull in some of the curious walk-up business but there’s little reason to expect it to do well enough to matter in the end. If the franchise has a future, perhaps it needs to be explored in streaming and animation more, to build a mainstream audience first instead of trying to just will one into existence with $180 million wasted investments.