Alita: Battle Angel Fans Really, Really Want a Sequel

[Eren]

Battle Angel Alita is a Japanese manga with a pretty decent cult following, as does the 1993 two episode OVA, Battle Angel. It’s pretty safe to say fans had high expectations when Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron were set to produce a live action big budget adaptation with a cast featuring stars like Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali.

Ultimately, while the 2019 film Alita: Battle Angel collected a decent $404m from the worldwide box office (Rodriguez’s highest grossing film as of yet), including a hefty $130m from the evermore important Chinese market, it was not a resounding success for 20th Century Fox, who then owned the film rights to Yukito Kishiro’s cyberpunk manga. Critically, Alita: Battle Angel wowed with its use of special effects and motion capture, but the script and plot both received a rather lukewarm reception.

Still, as tends to happen with series that enjoy a cult following, Alita fans -AKA the Alita Army- are clamoring for a sequel to 2019’s movie or, as seen recently, at least for a rerelease on theaters.

Using the hashtags #AlitaArmy and #AlitaSequel, fans are calling for a Twitter campaign event on October 1st, meant to garner attention from Cinemark, or any other movie chain, to #RereleaseAlita. The push does not come as much of a surprise, considering past similar Twitter events, like the one that prompted the Alita sequel hashtag on July 23rd 2020, to mark the film’s home video release anniversary.

The Alita Army might want to put their expectations in check though, as aside from all the financial considerations, Alita: Battle Angel is now a Disney owned property, meaning any future plans for the franchise will have to be greenlit by them.

Alita: Battle Angel was not a flop or bad movie by any means; it’s a sci-fi special effects bonanza with 3 Academy Award-winning actors taking a backseat to Rosa Salazar’s charming motion-captured cyborg eyes. The film delivers a satisfying enough anime adaptation, something Hollywood is yet to figure out, but it's a reasonable bet that Disney’s wide repertoire of big sci-fi properties will keep anything Alita-related pretty squarely on the back burner.