TRON: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), featuring all original music by Nine Inch Nails. Created for the third installment in the groundbreaking TRON film franchise, TRON: Ares stands among Nine Inch Nails’ most compelling albums, humming with menace, melancholy and momentum as analog soul and digital dread collide. It also marks the first-ever film score by the pioneering band although bandmates Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have composed 20 scores under their own names, winning two Oscars, three Golden Globes, a GRAMMY® and an Emmy in the process. In this exclusive Empire feature, Reznor delves into why they approached TRON: Ares as a Nine Inch Nails project.
Founded in 1988 by Reznor, Nine Inch Nails is widely considered one of the most innovative, influential acts in modern music. Known for fusing industrial, electronic, rock and ambient sounds into emotionally raw and sonically aggressive compositions, the band has won two GRAMMY® Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020. Nine Inch Nails’ multi-Platinum studio albums include their 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999), which was their first album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a feat repeated by With Teeth (2005).
In 2008, Reznor and Ross launched a prolific career in composing music for film. Their first project, David Fincher’s The Social Network, earned the pair an Oscar and a Golden Globe. They’ve gone on to compose music for a diverse array of film and television projects, including the Watchmen series for HBO, which earned the duo an Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a series. Their score for the 2020 animated Pixar film Soul. won numerous awards, including an Oscar, GRAMMY, Golden Globe and British Academy Film Award. In the same year, their score for Fincher’s MANK received nominations for many of the same awards. Recent projects have included Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, Fincher’s The Killer and a trio of projects with director Luca Guadagnino – Bones and All, Challengers and Queer.
Earlier this year, Reznor and Ross announced Future Ruins, a one-day music festival created and curated by the duo. Celebrating the visionary composers shaping the sound of modern cinema and television, the event features live performances across three stages—including select sets with full orchestra. Held on November 8, 2025, at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, Future Ruins invites audiences to experience the duo’s groundbreaking score work—and that of their peers—not as background, but as the main event. The music tells the story.
As a work by Nine Inch Nails, TRON: Ares is a bracing departure from these acclaimed scores. Its architecture in sound: pulsating synths, distorted textures, and haunting melodies. Not one second of orchestra. Instead, the album erupts with the full force of Nine Inch Nails, breaking boundaries and redefining what a score can be.
