I don’t know.

I’ve talked before about how it’s kinda futile to try and theorize why any large organization of people does anything. Especially one like Disney.

I mean, of course the ultimate motive has gotta be profit, and yet the original Tron was, as I understand it, not all that profitable by the standards of Disney’s expectations. It was a very un-Disney-like movie, pitched by independent screenwriters, allowed more freedom than most Disney movies ever get… and the fact that it built a truly devoted fan base over the years was a thing Disney had no real control over, which I know they don’t like.

I’m sure all subsequent official Tron materials have been attempts to monetize that devoted little fan base, but they’ve varied a lot in how successful that was.

And I sure don’t claim to be an expert on Disney at ALL– I’d mostly rather not even think about them– but from what I’ve heard (especially lately) they are usually very reluctant to take chances on anything that is so hit-and-miss in terms of the chance of monetary success.

(It’s why they didn’t make Tron 3 a whole bunch of years ago– there was another movie that flopped and it got them scared about the risk that Tron could flop and so they just froze and did nothing with it for a long ass time.)

I think their decreasing willingness to take chances is definitely hitting the quality of what they do make, although this has been a problem for Disney and to some degree the whole entertainment industry for a long time.

I do not know why they have focused any effort on building the Tron franchise specifically. Maybe it’s just a case of “only so many properties that already have fans, and we’ve already milked the others half to death, so it’s either milk Tron or make up something new and omg we can never do that lol”

But again, I’m not saying I know. Not saying they have a cohesive plan of any kind. The workings of corporate motivations are a mystery to me, and probably a mystery to anyone who recognizes true chaos when they see it.

Said it before and I’ll say it again. Whether they meant it or not, Disney’s had Kevin Flynn as a self-insert character for a long time.