Cutting-Edge Tron 2 Marketing Effort Begins With Newest Advances in Animated GIFdom

Rumors about the budget for Disney's Tron 2 have hovered around $300 million for a while now, but just so you know, it's all going on the screen. At least that's the impression left by one of the studio's first viral marketing efforts, mysteriously teasing journalists in advance of this week's Comic-Con with its circa-1998 multimedia breakthrough. If the picture to the right gets you excited, just wait until you see the mindblowing animation after the jump.

One film blogger said he was awoken this morning by a FedEx deliverywoman, who handed off a package containing an unmarked flash drive and two game tokens marked "Flynn's Arcade" and "TRON". Each refers back to Disney's 1982 original film, but even that featured more sophisticated effects than those on the flash drive -- a cryptic animated GIF with repeating code and fancy 2-D backgrounds:

Hmm. I'm sure Seth and Kyle will get to the bottom of all of this once they arrive this weekend in San Diego, but if the quickly spreading gossip that Tron 2's heroes are doing battle in a cutting-edge GeoCities page happens to be true, then forgive us. We'll probably just stick with Avatar.

· Tron 2 Viral Begins: Is Flynn's Arcade in San Diego? [/film]