Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel is one of those films… it received mediocre reviews from critics (61% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 5.9/10), phenomenal reviews from audiences (93% on Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score) and relatively poorly at the global box office (grossed $US 400 million with a production budget of $US 170 million). I remember posting my review of Captain Marvel a few months back and the comments section was flooded with people carrying either the anti-Disney or pro-Alita flag or both. However, despite its rabid fanbase, it looks like we might not be getting a second chapter to the incomplete story.
In an interview with Slahsfilm, Rosa Salazar who plays Alita talked about her willingness to reprise the character once again.
“I would play Alita ‘til my last breath. I would, and thanks to the performance capture technology, I probably could.”
However, when asked if she’s heard anything about a second film, she denied and urged fans to keep cheering on the film. She also said there are other ways besides the box office to show a studio how much you love a film.
“Not yet, but buy those Blu-rays; On Amazon. But no, I haven’t heard anything yet.”
To add another ripple to the problem, Alita was one of the last films 20th Century Fox distributed before being purchased by Disney.
“Yeah, I mean, they had a crazy merger. People are gaining jobs, people are losing jobs. The whole Disney/Fox acquisition is so involved, this isn’t the right time for me to call Alan Horn and be like, ‘Hey bro, I know you got a lotta stuff going on, but like what about Alita 2?’”
Apart from wishing Alita 2 into fruition, Rosa Salazar keeps herself busy by working on a bunch of other projects including Undone, a time-travelling fantasy series created with rotoscope animation for Amazon. Salazar expressed her excitement to take her Alita performance capture skills to the next level.
“What I’m really excited about right now, in my own career, is this sort of new thing I’ve tapped into where I get to fully lose myself in a character because I’m animated. It’s live-action but because the last few things I’ve been doing are animated, I’m able to completely leave this behind, my body behind and exist in this other dimension as a completely different creature. These character, Alita and Alma, are almost their own people because they are in their own dimension. So I get to completely transform not with prosthetics, not necessarily with makeup or hair, wardrobe but through this other animation process.”
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