‘Alita: Battle Angel’ hit theaters in 2019, giving many viewers their first experience of this futuristic dystopia based on the original manga that first appeared in 1990. James Cameron had spent years making the film, but as was preparing ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water,’ he sought help from director Robert Rodríguez to bring the story to life, now it is known how both have agreed to make the sequel yes or yes.
Alita: The Cyborg Sense
The first Alita movie introduced us to the story of a cyborg trying to find his place in the world, fighting against other mechanical opponents while also skating in a rollerball league unlike any sport these days. In the final moments he left a hint for a sequel, leaving many avenues to explore a possible second film. That seemed unlikely… until now.
In a recent segment for Variety titled “Directors on Directors,” Robert Rodríguez and James Cameron took a “blood oath” to make another ‘Alita’ movie, although nothing concrete has been confirmed, they left this message of hope to the fans.
“Hey, let’s make another #Wing film,” James Cameron tells Robert Rodriguez. “Blood oath!” https://t.co/SWFb3RYp4k pic.twitter.com/98blgWZtuA
—Variety (@Variety) December 14, 2022
Finding the way between blockbusters
Most of the conversation between Rodríguez and Cameron was about ‘Avatar 2’, although the director of ‘Aliens’ made another reference to ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ when he explained the general process of writing:
“For me, it’s a journey of discovery. You mark a path and have some vague goals in mind. I start writing a lot of notes. But you know this, because I gave you 600 pages of notes on “Alita”: about the world and how the cyborgs. I don’t know if all of that was helpful, but that’s my process. I try to get to a granular level of what it’s like to live in that world.”
However, in an interview with producer John Landau in Collider, he puts the real perspective of it finally happening:
“We want to do it. But we are also the type of people who give 110% of ourselves to everything we do. It’s not something we would have focused on in the middle of ‘Avatar: Way of Water.’ It’s something that, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to Robert about. We have had numerous conversations. So it’s something we still want to see happen.”
Landau also commented on the possibility that, as with Alita, Cameron will pass the Avatar torch to other directors in the future:
“You would have said the same thing when Jim wrote his draft of Alita: Battle Angel, that Jim is never going to leave this for someone else to do. And we found a director who wanted to continue our vision for the movie and allowed us to create a partnership with Robert where I was on set every day with him, we edited the film in Los Angeles, we were very much a part of the visual effects. So I think there are directors who can do that, and that was a great experience.”