Tron: Ares is climbing up a major box office chart. The third installment in the тιтular sci-fi franchise, it stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, and Jeff Bridges. The Tron: Ares box office kicked off with an uninspiring opening weekend that saw it fall far below its original domestic projections of $45 to $50 million by hitting a 3-day total of $33.2 million.

Per The Numbers, Tron: Ares earned an additional $1.858 million at the domestic box office on Wednesday, October 15. This now brings its cumulative domestic total to $41.94 million toward the end of the movie’s first full week in theaters. It has now risen to become the 253rd highest-grossing science fiction movie of all time at the domestic box office.

In doing so, it has surpᴀssed 10 other science fiction movies on the all-time chart, including 2007’s Aliens vs. Predator – Requiem ($41.8 million), 2017’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets ($40.5 million), 1998’s The Faculty ($40.3 million), and 2017’s Ghost in the Shell ($40.6 million).

Perhaps most notably, Tron: Ares has surpᴀssed two different sci-fi franchise movies starring Keanu Reeves in one fell swoop. The first was the 2021 legacy sequel The Matrix Resurrections ($40.46 million), which reunited Reeves with his original Matrix co-star Carrie-Anne Moss. Tron also outgrossed his franchise-kickstarting 1989 success Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure ($40.48 million).

It remains to be seen how high Tron: Ares can climb up the sci-fi chart by the end of its run. However, it has the potential to keep making major strides.

Even if 2025’s Tron: Ares drops 60% during its sophomore weekend (which would be a dip from the 56.5% drop of its immediate predecessor, 2010’s Tron: Legacy), it could still add at least $13.2 million more to its total by the end of day 10.

This would allow it to hit roughly $55.2 million, surging another 43 places up the chart and surpᴀssing тιтles such as 2013’s Riddick ($42 million), 2010’s Predators ($52 million), 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier ($52.2 million),1987’s RoboCop ($53.4 million), and 2011’s Source Code ($54.7 million).

While it seems destined to soon join the Top 200 highest-grossing domestic science fiction movies of all time, Ares still has quite a way to climb in order to justify the fact that it has the biggest price tag of all the Tron movies (not adjusted for inflation), with a reported budget of roughly $180 million.

This could place the estimated break-even point for Tron: Ares as $450 million, which is a point that it seems highly unlikely to reach while it is in theaters, considering the fact that Legacy only grossed $400.1 million after its far superior opening weekend of $44 million.

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