By far the more successful 2019 movie to be co-written and produced by James Cameron, Alita: Battle Angel fared much better with critics and at the box office than the Titanic and Avatar director’s other project from this year, notorious box office bomb Terminator: Dark Fate. Admittedly, this came as something of a surprise given that many had been predicting Alita to tank ever since it was first announced, given the massive $170 million budget and constant delays that saw the original July 2018 release date pushed back by six months.
While Alita wasn’t a particularly big hit on home turf, Robert Rodriguez’s blockbuster sci-fi fared much better with international audiences, with almost 80% of the movie’s $405 million global haul coming from overseas territories. It may not have turned a huge profit, then, but the film definitely broke even at the very least, and also turned out to be a success in the lucrative Chinese market. And these days, that’s often enough to secure the greenlight for a sequel.
The demand for a follow-up to Alita isn’t exactly as deafening as the calls from Justice League fans to release the Snyder Cut, but producer Jon Landau has nonetheless been calling the so-called ‘Alita Army’ to arms by asking them to get #AlitaSequel trending on Twitter. And it looks like his rallying cry worked, with the hashtag now trending after fans of the movie decided to make their voices heard.
However, these cries may ultimately fall on deaf ears, especially with Disney now in control of the franchise after completing their takeover of 20th Century Fox. The Mouse House aren’t particularly well known for making risky movies, and spending up to $200 million on a sequel to what was at best a minor hit and future cult classic isn’t really in their wheelhouse, meaning that any potential Alita: Battle Angel sequel will likely remain a pipe-dream for now.
