'Alita: Battle Angel': Producer Jon Landau Has Spoken to Robert Rodriguez About an Sequel!!
Producer Jon Landau still wants to do a sequel for 2019's Alita: Battle Angel and has been in talks with the movie's director, Robert Rodriguez. The reveal comes from an exclusive interview with Collider's own Perri Nemiroff for James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water.
Inspired by Yukito Kishiro's manga series Battle Angel Alita, the 2019's movie stars Rosa Salazar as the titular heroine, an android who has to figure out her place in the world while standing up against an oppressive regime. While the movie failed to impress at the box office, Alita: Battle Angel slowly became a cult classic, gathering a legion of fans who are always eager to tell everyone how the film is just the first chapter of a much larger story. And while Alita: Battle Angel struggled to break even due to its enormous $170 million production costs, it would be a shame not to see the story comes to fruition, especially when the movie's universe is so rich and exciting. Lucky for fans, Landau agrees and has actively discussed the possibility of a sequel with Rodriguez. As the producer tells us:
"We want to do it. But, we're also the type of people, we give 110% of ourselves to whatever we do. It's not something we could have focused on in the midst of 'Avatar: Way of Water.' It's something that, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to Robert. We've had numerous conversations. So it's something that we still want to happen."
As Landau underlines, part of his desire to do a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel comes from Salazar's take on the character. As he explains, "her character and the way Rosa played it, I just love it. The story that is so relatable, her character, and I say about her, she's not a perfect person and she has her flaws, but she rises up to do it. She pulled it off. It was great." We couldn't agree more, and we do hope Alita: Battle Angel gets the sequel it deserves.
How Alita: Battle Angel Taught James Cameron to Trust Other Directors
During our interview, Landau also commented on the possibility of Cameron passing the Avatar torch to other directors in the future. As Landau reveals, Alita: Battle Angel was the movie that taught Cameron to trust other people with his scripts. At first, Cameron was expected to direct the film adaptation from a script he wrote with Laeta Kalogridis. However, when it became impossible for Cameron to juggle Alita and Avatar 2, he reached out to Rodriguez. Landau tells us that:
"You would've said the same thing when Jim wrote his draft of Alita: Battle Angel, that Jim's never going to give this up for someone else to do. And we found a director who wanted to continue with what our vision was of the movie and allowed us to create a partnership with Robert where I was on the set every day with him, we edited the movie 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."
Avatar: The Way of Water comes to theaters on December 16.
Tags: #AlitaBattleAngel, #AlitaBattleAngel2, #RosaSalazar
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