Spearheading a small independent studio, British video game developer Mike Bithell has been writing his latest brainchild, an adaptation of Disney’s sci-fi saga “Tron” unveiled earlier this week.
The original Oscar-nominated film “Tron”, which came out in 1982, tells the story of Kevin Flynn, a programmer who gets trapped in a virtual world created by a computer and attempts to escape.
“I’m very interested in artificial intelligence, computers, robots, aliens, so it was the right fit,” Bithell told AFP of his excitement about making a video game version of “Tron”.
A remake of the classic motion picture, which rose to fame due to its distinctive retrofuturist ambiance and pioneering visual special effects, will hit theatres in 2025.
“I wore out the VHS tape of Tron because… as a kid I loved it,” recalled the developer, who said he and US entertainment giant Disney had been looking for “opportunities to work together for a little while”.
“This was a story about someone who made computer games, which as a kid I thought was the coolest thing in the world.”
“Obviously now I know the horrible reality that it’s a very nerdy job,” Bithell added.
Following a 2010 sequel to the original film — “Tron: Legacy” — a third instalment, “Tron: Ares”, is expected to be released in 2025.
The upcoming game — “Tron: Catalyst” — is set on a “separate grid”, the online world depicted in the saga, and will have its own story, said Bithell, who founded his studio in 2013.
The game-maker promised players an experience that would complement the latest “Tron” film, adding that his team worked closely with the production.
Bithell made a name for himself in the industry with the success of “Thomas was alone”, an originally browser-based puzzle video game he created in 2012.
It earned a BAFTA Games Award in the UK and more than one million copies were sold.
“There is that kind of connective tissue” between the Disney film and “Thomas was alone”, which also takes place inside a computer, said the creator.
Bithell Games first revisited the “Tron” universe last year with “Tron: Identity”, which offered investigative gameplay but had lesser ambitions than “Tron: Catalyst”.
“It was our way of kind of learning how to tell a Tron story, working with Disney,” said Bithell.
Shifting from making independent games to adapting a universe by a media titan was a risky transition — although his firm had already crafted action film saga “John Wick” games for PC and consoles in 2019.
“People often think with working on franchises… that it’s a lot of rules setting and, you know, you’re being told what to do all the time,” he said.
“It’s not that at all. It’s more of a collaborative peer kind of conversation.”
Despite several titles drawing on the world of “Tron”, it is far from ranking amongst the most adapted Disney universes, unlike revered Star Wars and Indiana Jones, which were spun off into brand-new games this year.
Open-world “Star Wars Outlaws”, which is based on the beloved epic, hit shelves in August, while “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” has been slated for release on December 9.
