While “Alita: Battle Angel” was announced ages ago, I have to admit, I completely forgot about it, and figured it was one of those projects that slipped into development hell. It would be easy to understand why. An expensive (the budget is rumored to be near $200 million) adaptation of Yukito Kishiro‘s beloved manga, with no A-list stars — in today’s climate of branded blockbusters, it doesn’t seem like an obvious green light. However, James Cameron is one of the producers, and 20th Century Fox is willing to roll the dice on that fact alone. And indeed, not only has it gone into production, it’s coming out next summer.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez (making the biggest movie of his career), penned by Laeta Kalogridis (“Shutter Island,” “Terminator Genisys“) and Cameron, and starring Rosa Salazar, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley, Christoph Waltz, Ed Skrein, Mahershala Ali, Michelle Rodriguez, and Keean Johnson, the film will tell the story of a female cyborg, who is rescued from a scrapyard, and trained to become a warrior, finding love and adventure along the way. It’s sorta classic sci-fi stuff, getting told on a huge scale with a lot of money thrown at it. Hollywood hasn’t had the best track record lately adapting Japanese material (“Ghost In The Shell,” “Death Note“) so it’ll be interesting to see how this fares.
“Alita: Battle Angel” opens on July 20, 2018.
