Just like South Park said; James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is James Cameron. And yet, not even James Cameron has the pull to will a pair of Alita: Battle Angel sequels into existence. At least, not yet.
The opening installment has become one of the biggest cult favorite blockbusters of the last decade, a situation we wouldn’t have even found ourselves in to begin with had enough people shown up in the first place and paid for a ticket. A box office haul of just over $400 million on a budget estimated to be as high as $200 million simply wasn’t good enough, but the hype hasn’t died down.
In fact, the demands for additional adventures might be stronger than ever, even if Disney is now the company in a position to give it the green light following the Mouse House’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez have sworn a blood oath to make it happen, but so far we’ve got nothing to show for it.
Undeterred, The Book of Boba Fett executive producer offered to Inverse that the initial plan was for three films, and he’s refusing to give up.
“Jim’s outline was very detailed, because he was going to make these himself: three movies. So I would love to go and do it. We’ve been talking about it recently, and we always hope we can make that. Disney bought Fox and they weren’t making any Fox movies for a while, so I thought, okay, maybe that won’t happen. But now Fox has been making movies again, so it could happen. I don’t know if it’s easy, but it could happen, so I’m hoping it does.”
While Fox has been making movies again, it’s typically been smaller-scale projects under the Searchlight Studios banner, not risky and highly expensive propositions like an Alita 2. Cameron is plenty busy with the guaranteed cash cow that is the Avatar saga, so maybe that will eventually put him in a position to leverage his way into at least one more.