Robert Rodriguez will direct Battle Angel Alita movie

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With James Cameron too busy with Avatar sequels, Robert Rodriguez of Desperado and Sin City fame will take over the Battle Angel movie. Cameron will still produce.

Deadline said:
Twentieth Century Fox and producers James Cameron and Jon Landau are in talks with Robert Rodriguez to direct Alita: Battle Angel, the live action adaptation of the graphic novel series Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro.

Fans of the graphic novel have salivated over the prospect of Cameron directing the film, but he’s just too busy with three sequels to Avatar going back to back to back. So he’ll entrust it to Rodriguez, who launched the El Mariachi, Spy Kids, Sin City and From Dusk Till Dawn.

Set in the 26th century, Alita: Battle Angel tells the story of Alita, an amnesiac female cyborg who is rescued from a scrapyard by a doctor. The rebuilt Alita, remembering only her training in a deadly martial art, becomes a hunter-warrior, tracking down and eliminating vicious criminals. Within the context of an epic action-adventure, the film will explore a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and finding love.

“Robert and I have been looking for a film to do together for years, so I was pumped when he said he wanted to do Battle Angel,” Cameron said in a statement. “He’s very collaborative and we’re already like two kids building a go-kart, just having fun riffing creatively and technically. This project is near and dear to me, and there’s nobody I trust more than Robert, with his technical virtuosity and rebel style, to take over the directing reins. We’re looking forward to learning a lot from each other while we make a kick-ass epic.”

Added Robert Rodriguez: “Battle Angel is an incredibly rich and vibrant epic in the tradition of Jim Cameron’s spectacular, character-driven films. Getting to work from Jim’s terrific and visionary script while learning the cutting edge techniques he’s pioneered is a master class in filmmaking. It’s an honor to explore the world of Alita along with Jim and Jon, whose films have impacted me for decades.”

Cameron and Landau, who will produce for Fox under their Lightstorm Entertainment banner, are also currently in pre-production on the Avatar sequels.
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I'm not familiar with Battle Angel Alita, but I like Robert Rodriguez. I wouldn't have picked him to do an anime adaptation though. He has done insanely faithful adaptations in the past (the first Sin City), so I wouldn't write him off either.
 
Buzz201 said:
I'm not familiar with Battle Angel Alita, but I like Robert Rodriguez. I wouldn't have picked him to do an anime adaptation though. He has done insanely faithful adaptations in the past (the first Sin City), so I wouldn't write him off either.
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Cameron has also been sitting on this licence for a very long time aswell so hopefully it'll be faithful to the original now the technology to make the film actually exists.
 
I totally didn't know he'd done Spy Kids - I remember going to see that back in the day when it was in the cinema.

I suppose in this case at least it's clearly a passion project - Cameron wouldn't have held onto the license otherwise. Although - and maybe this is me speaking naively - it doesn't feel like a property that many people discuss these days. I mean, it's not exactly GITS - which still has currency even amongst 'current' Western anime fans.
 
The project is clearly an attempt to keep Jim Cameron onside at Fox, there's no way it would have been kept around if it wasn't. The same way Ridley Scott ends up making a tonne of random stuff for Fox.
 
I could be wrong, but I feel like Alita was always more of a cult thing than a mainstream success in the English speaking world. Perhaps it might have been different if they'd pursued the anime adaptation further than that two-part OAV.
 
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