Tron: Ares flops at the box office with $33.5 million debut against $180 million budget

Disney’s latest action film is off to a disappointing start at the box office.

Tron: Ares, the latest installment in the sci-fi franchise, raked in just $33.5 million over the weekend; a number that pales in comparison to the $180 million it cost to be made, not accounting for marketing costs. Early estimates had predicted the opening weekend haul to be between $40 and $50 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The film, available for viewing at 4,000 theaters in the U.S. during its opening weekend, earned $27 million overseas, bringing the overall total to about $60 million. However, Tron: Ares has yet to open in China and will do so next weekend.

Tron: Ares is the third installment in the franchise, which began in 1982 with the original Tron (which has since become a cult classic), and picks up where 2010’s Tron: Legacy left off. Ares is sent on a risky mission, leaving the digital world for the real world, marking humankind’s first encounter with AI individuals.

After its opening weekend, the film received a 57 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but a healthier 88 percent from audiences.

The Joachim Ronning-helmed film stars controversial actor Jared Leto, who made headlines this year for being accused by nine women of sexual misconduct. Several of them were minors when the alleged incidents took place.

“All of the allegations are expressly denied,” a representative for Leto said in a statement at the time.

In addition to Leto as Ares, the cast includes Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges.

In a one-star review for The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey called the latest installment in the franchise the “worst film of the year and a new low for Disney.”

“The music’s great, but this Jared Leto vehicle is otherwise an ethically dubious, horribly written nadir in franchise slop,” wrote Loughrey, applauding the film’s score by Nine Inch Nails.

“You’re listening to all this, though, while actively looking at the most disposable franchise fodder imaginable. Tron: Ares has the visual flair of a mobile game and a thematic depth that makes the 1982 original’s premise – Jeff Bridges gets sucked into a computer – feel like it was written by philosophers.

“It’s especially painful when Jesse Wigutow’s script tries to signal Ares’s blossoming humanity by having him crack little jokes and, at one point, riff on the Huey Lewis and the News monologue Christian Bale delivered to Leto in American Psycho, only here about Depeche Mode and without the subsequent murder.”