It looks like following the release of Alita: Battle Angel, the film has had such a resonance with fans that they’ve been fighting to see a sequel get made. The fanbase has labeled themselves the Alita Army and have been petitioning and branding their desire to receive Alita: Battle Angel 2. While nothing has been made clear yet on that front, Alita: Battle Angel producer Jon Landau has opened up about the possibilities.
Jon Landau recently sat down for an interview with CinemaBlend, where he brought up the potential sequel and told fans to keep up their efforts if they ever want to see it happen. Here’s what he stated specifically:
“What I think the Alita Army should do is keep peppering our family now at Disney and [let them know] how important it is to have another Alita movie and hopefully we’ll venture there one day.”
He’s right to emphasize that Alita: Battle Angel is now at Disney, since they’ve acquired Fox which originally produced and released the film. The ball is in their park, and no matter what the Alita Army can do to show their interest in getting a sequel, they’ll have to prove it to Disney first.
Jon Landau also brought up how much time would have to go into creating the sequel, and gave fans an idea of just how long it’d be after such a project could begin that the sequel would get released.
“I think when you can talk about any movie, and I won’t talk specifically about Alita, but your first step is writing a script. You’ve got to assume that’s going to take you 12 to 18 months to write a script. Assuming that script is great, you then have a six to 10 month pre-production. You then have a six month shoot. You then have a year of post-production and that’s just any movie of this ilk.”
And thankfully, Landau revealed, there have been ideas for where to take the films going forward if such a sequel were greenlit – thanks to story ideas from James Cameron.
“Absolutely. … When Jim [Cameron] was going to direct us, which he was at point, in his mind he had plotted out two additional stories of where we would go very specifically.”
It’s also worth mentioning that Disney owns Disney Plus – which means there’s also a possibility that the potential Alita sequel could end up on there as well. But here’s what Jon Landau said on the subject:
“Well, I won’t speak specifically about Alita. I would just tell you that I think Jim [Cameron] and I love the opportunities that streaming and these other avenues of distribution are offering people today. And you know, we would love to get into those playgrounds and play in them, no matter what the title is.”
It looks like Alita director Robert Rodriguez is open to return, as is star Rose Salazar, so hopefully with time and the interest from the Alita Army – something official might eventually go into the works. It’s also worth pointing out that at the time of writing this article, #AlitaSequel is trending on Twitter with over 12,000 fans taking part in the campaign so far.