Industrial metal powerhouse Nine Inch Nails will be composing the soundtrack for the upcoming third film in the Tron franchise, Tron: Ares. The news broke this Friday at Disney’s D23 expo, with a trailer featuring NIN’s 1989 track “Something I Can Never Have.” Tron: Ares will feature new original songs, the band’s first since 2020’s Ghosts V and Ghosts VI.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have scored many films and TV shows over the past decade and a half, including The Social Network (2010), HBO’s Watchmen series (2019), and Challengers (2024). This will be the first film soundtrack where the longtime collaborators are credited as Nine Inch Nails.
The Reznor-Ross dynamic duo is without a doubt the most successful example of alt-metal artists breaking into the soundtrack world, but that’s not to say that others haven’t tried. Korn’s Jonathan Davis composed several original tracks for 2002’s Queen of the Damned, and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park co-scored the international release of Indonesian thriller The Raid: Redemption (2011). Chino Moreno of Deftones fame scored "I'm Just Fucking With You", a 2019 episode of the Hulu horror anthology series Into the Dark. There are signs the new wave of nu-metal artists are starting to make similar moves. Oklahoma’s nu-sludge darlings Chat Pile composed a downright unsettling score for 2022 indie drama Tenkiller, and hopefully we see more contemporary acts following in their footsteps.
Tron: Ares is set for a theatrical release on October 10, 2025.
