One thing was clear when the TRON: Legacy filmmakers set out to make the video game: they didn’t want to do a movie-based title the traditional way.

“There are a lot of pitfalls with that (traditional) model,” explains Propaganda Games’ Chris Whiteside. “Which is, people will usually throw assets at you and tell you to make a game out of it. They (director Joe Kosinski and producer Sean Bailey) said, ‘Not doing the franchise justice would be damaging.’”

The Vancouver-based, Disney-owned gameco’s design director was on hand at this past weekend’s Fan Expo Canada in Toronto to show off TRON: Evolution, based on the upcoming film starring Olivia Wilde, Jeff Bridges and Michael Sheen. Both are slated for a holiday launch, with the game hitting retail shelves just before the film hits the big screen.

Whiteside says it’s the first time his team has worked so closely with the filmmakers, and it’s a model he hopes will become an industry standard going forward. “The gameplay is very story-driven, not a carbon copy of the movie,” he says, though he was unable to reveal specific details without spoilers. “The film writers came on to collaborate on the storyline, which involve a lot of flashbacks that will also be seen in the movie.”

Because the involved parties were trying out this new biz model, this saw the Propaganda team frequently heading down to Disney Interactive’s headquarters in Glendale, California to meet with Kosinksi and Bailey, as well as a number of set visits during film production to figure out how to blend the two visions as seamlessly as possible.

Production on both the film and the game is projected to finish at the same time, with voice acting for the game completed four months ago. So far, the only announced voice talents on the game are Wilde and Bruce Boxleitner, who starred in the original 1982 TRON, with more to follow.

Whiteside credits Bailey (Gone Baby Gone, Matchstick Men) for championing efforts on the game side, calling him a “visionary of crossmedia. The cross-pollination in film and game could quickly be a good model since everything’s so neatly woven together.”