Over the past ten years, a lot of movies have been released with franchise ambitions baked into them, even if the first film fails to really take off, and that sequel never sees the light of day. A new film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe gets made with audiences already thinking that a sequel will show up, or at the very least, the character will show up in a crossover film. Films like Fantastic Beasts announce a five-film story, only to stop at three after a lack of interest, and even still, movies like Morbius fall on their face immediately (only to stand up and fall down again).
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On the flipside, sometimes movies come out and actually are immediate successes, with no movement on their future happening because they’ve been caught in a game of Hollywood politics. Such is the case of Alita: Battle Angel, a long-awaited sci-fi epic from Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron that was released in 2019 to over $400 million at the global box office. Alita fans have been campaigning for a sequel, and now, they may finally get their wish.
Alita Sequel Finally Gets Major Update
Upon its release, Alita: Battle Angel, an adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s manga series, was a moderate success. The millions of dollars that it brought in at the box office, especially in the early parts of the year, were an impressive feat, especially for a title that languished in development hell for years. Now, though, producer James Cameron has confirmed that not only are they working on it, but he and Rodriguez have made a pact.
“I appreciate the loyalty of the Alita fans,” Cameron revealed to Empire. “Robert Rodriguez and I have sworn a blood oath to do at least one more Alita movie. In fact, we’re thinking of an architecture that bridges to a third film, but we’ll be satisfied if we can make one more. And we’re making progress on that….Now that I have a home in Austin, Texas, about three miles from [Robert’s] place, I think we’ll probably get more serious about that as soon as I wrap the mix here in a few weeks.”
There was a lot working against a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel from the beginning, though. One month after the film’s release, 20th Century Fox was fully absorbed by The Walt Disney Company, which had to consolidate the business of a rival studio into their own and start deciding what elements it wanted to explore for itself. In the years since, this has taken the form of new movies in the Planet of the Apes, Predator, and Alien franchises, but so far, nothing for Alita.
Despite all these things working against an Alita sequel, fans have never given up, and with James Cameron about to deliver the third Avatar movie into the world, and almost certainly give Disney another $2 billion-grossing movie in the process, he may very well be able to cash in on the goodwill that Avatar sequels have afforded him and convert it into an Alita follow-up (or two).
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