How ‘Tron: Ares’ Director Got Nine Inch Nails To Score its First Film 

When Joachim Rønning told people he was directing Disney’s upcoming Tron: Ares, they always had the same first question: “Who is going to make the music?” he says. “A big part of the franchise is the music.”

That’s quite the understatement: Wendy Carlos’ pioneering electronica for the original 1982 film — about a video-­game developer trapped inside his own software — inspired a generation of digital-­minded composers and dance artists, from synthwave musician Kavinsky to electronic artist M83. Nearly three decades later, Daft Punk arguably upped the ante with its sophisticated synthesizer opus for the franchise’s second film, 2010’s Tron: Legacy, which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

Now Nine Inch Nails is adding to that legacy. Rønning reveals that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who won the best original score Academy Award for The Social Network in 2011 and Soul in 2021, were at the top of “a very short list” of composers he wanted for Tron: Ares.

“I wanted [this] to be a grittier version of Tron, highlighting the contrast between the artificial world and the real world. I wanted it to have an industrial feeling to it,” he says. “I think it’s already one of the more grown-up franchises at Disney, and it was important for me to take it to the next level.”

After the ask was out to Reznor and Ross, Tom MacDougall, president of Walt Disney Music, suggested the duo — who normally compose for films under their own names — should score the film as Nine Inch Nails, their band in which they are currently the only two full-time members. “We were surprised they didn’t say no right away,” Rønning says with a laugh. When they agreed, he was “ecstatic.”

While the Norwegian director prefers a hands-on approach with most film composers, he “took the back seat a little bit” with Tron: Ares. “It’s their band, it’s their sound,” he says. “And I wanted their take on the movie, their take on the story.”

Reznor and Ross have been “very involved in the mixing process,” Rønning says, “because we wanted a lot of their music to be front and center.” Naturally, some of the 24 tracks on the Tron: Ares soundtrack (out Sept. 19, with the film opening Oct. 10) will be instrumentals, but he promises that “there are scenes that are basically Trent singing” as the action of the film — starring Jared Leto as Ares, an artificial intelligence program sent to the real world on a perilous mission — unfolds.

While AI is certainly part of the storyline, Rønning says flatly that it wasn’t used in making the soundtrack. “I have a very mixed relationship with AI,” he says. “It can’t beat the 2,000 artists working on this movie… For me, [this film] is about what it means and what it takes to be human.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.