Introduction
Harrison Ellenshaw figured he had it made. As a visual effects artist, he had the incredible luck of not only working on Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but now he'd just completed work on Tron, which he was certain would be another monster hit. In fact, Disney was already predicting it would be bigger than Star Wars.
Ellenshaw took off to Hawaii to celebrate the good news to come. He expected his phone to ring any minute to tell him that Tron was a smash. But after sitting on the beach for a while, he just couldn't wait any longer. He jumped the gun and called the head of Disney, Dick Cook, to get the box office score. "Well Dick, how'd we do?"
Life, especially in Hollywood, is full of surprises. Tron would make a huge impact, indeed - just not the way Ellenshaw expected. The brainchild of writer / director Steve Lisberger, Tron had state-of-the-art special effects when it was released at the peak of the Atari age. The film was practically custom built for any young video game freak or computer geek at the time in 1982 - as well as decades afterward. Few could have predicted that Tron would have such an enduring effect on film, computers and video games. Indeed, the film's cult following is stronger than ever.
With a huge built-in audience, a video game franchise based on a hit film is certainly attractive to any major studio. But movies based on video games still suffer a rocky transition to the silver screen, and it still remains to be seen if we'll ever have a great, modern video game film. However, today's generation is reminded of the great video game movie that already graced us nearly 25 years ago: Tron. Now Tom's Games gives you the complete inside story of the groundbreaking film and its legacy.
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