TRON

on the way because of this guy:

How did Mr. Kosinski convince Disney he was remotely qualified to shoulder this load? It sounds corny, but it all started back in 2007 with one guy who believed in him: Sean Bailey, a Disney producer who was trying to figure out how to reinvent “Tron.” Mr. Bailey had heard through the Hollywood grapevine about a director of commercials — that would be Mr. Kosinski — who had an unusual visual style.

His ads, some of which are viewable on josephkosinski.com, were moody, arresting sales pitches for Chevrolet cars, Nike shoes and video games like Gears of War. By using light, music and perspective in creative ways Mr. Kosinski had turned the commercials into free-standing pieces of entertainment. “I immediately thought that this was genuinely a very, very special talent,” Mr. Bailey said.

An uncommissioned video called “iSPEC” stood out in particular. Having been told by advertising agencies that his style was too arty when he first started out, Mr. Kosinski decided to prove that he knew how to sell products by imagining what an iPod might look like in the future and designing a commercial for it. The result — on which iPods can place their users inside digital re-creations of movie scenes — evoked the core idea of “Tron.”

Mr. Bailey convinced Disney to give Mr. Kosinski some money to put together some test footage, essentially a three-minute ride into the world of “Tron” as Mr. Kosinski saw it. Impressed at the outcome but still hesitant to pull the trigger, Disney decided to show the footage at Comic-Con International, the annual multimedia geekfest in San Diego.

The reaction was nuclear. (“Nerds like me weep with joy,” wrote a blogger on Cinematical.com.) Disney told Mr. Kosinski to proceed.

“Tron: Legacy,” filmed with an updated version of the 3-D camera system that James Cameron used to make “Avatar,” focuses on Sam Flynn, the 27-year-old son of the hacker Kevin Flynn, who was pulled inside the computer in the original film, and who has been trapped there for the last 20 years. Sam, played by Garrett Hedlund (“Four Brothers”), looks into the disappearance of his father and finds himself zapped into the same realm...