Who directed Alita: Battle Angel?
Robert Rodriguez directed Alita: Battle Angel from a screenplay he shaped from material written by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. Cameron and Jon Landau produced the film.
Questions about Alita: Battle Angel
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who plays Alita in Alita: Battle Angel?
Rosa Salazar plays Alita, portraying the cyborg lead through motion capture and CGI animation. Salazar was cast in the role near the end of May 2016.
What manga is Alita: Battle Angel based on?
Alita: Battle Angel is based on Yukito Kishiro's cyberpunk manga series Battle Angel Alita, first published in the early 1990s. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro originally brought the manga to James Cameron's attention.
When did Alita: Battle Angel premiere?
Alita: Battle Angel held its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on the 31st of January 2019. It opened in the United States on the 14th of February 2019 through 20th Century Fox.
How much did Alita: Battle Angel make at the box office?
Alita: Battle Angel became Robert Rodriguez's highest-grossing film. Outside financial publications estimated the film needed $400-500 million worldwide to break even, and some observers put its losses as high as $53 million.
Why did Alita: Battle Angel take so long to get made?
Development began in 2003 but stalled repeatedly while James Cameron worked first on Avatar and then its sequels. Robert Rodriguez was not announced as director until April 2016, after Cameron brought him in to shape the screenplay into a shooting script.
Is there a sequel to Alita: Battle Angel?
A sequel was confirmed to be in active development as of April 2023. Jon Landau said Robert Rodriguez would direct and Rosa Salazar would return as Alita. In November 2025, James Cameron said he and Rodriguez were writing the script together.