6 years. That’s exactly how long fans have been waiting for an Alita: Battle Angel sequel. While Hollywood has found the time to churn out a million Fast & Furious movies about “family,” a genuinely solid second installment of Alita: Battle Angel has been left sitting in development limbo. Fans didn’t give up though. They fought. They tweeted. They even ran billboards outside the Oscars. And guess what? It paid off. James Cameron just dropped the Alita: Battle Angel 2 promise everyone’s been patiently waiting for.
Speaking to Empire Magazine, he confirmed he and Robert Rodriguez aren’t just casually talking about a sequel. They’ve practically signed it in blood. “Robert Rodriguez and I have sworn a blood oath to do at least one more Alita movie. In fact, we’re thinking of an architecture that bridges to a third film, but we’ll be satisfied if we can make one more. And we’re making progress on that.”
As we all know, Cameron doesn’t mess around with sci-fi franchises. He also added, “Now that I have a home in Austin, Texas, about three miles from [Robert’s] place, I think we’ll probably get more serious about that as soon as I wrap the mix here in a few weeks.”
Back in 2019, things looked less promising. Disney had just bought 20th Century Fox and Bob Iger reportedly made it clear: no Cameron directing, no Alita: Battle Angel 2. That would have killed the project. Cameron was too busy building blue CGI worlds and planning a Last Train from Hiroshima movie he wants to slip in between Avatar 3 and Avatar 4. Luckily, fans’ wishes have prevailed.
The original Alita made around $400 million worldwide. That’s not a disaster, but, of course, not Avatar money either. Critics weren’t convinced, but fans adored Rosa Salazar’s and Christoph Waltz’s performances.
There’s a ton of story left too. The first movie only covered about two of the five manga volumes.
The late Jon Landau (Cameron’s longtime producer, who sadly passed in July 2024) confirmed the team’s focus was there. “We’re working on it,” he told Screen Rant in 2023. “We’re talking to Robert and talking to Rosa and all is good.”
Fans kept Alita: Battle Angel 2 alive when the studio wouldn’t. The Ranker.com polls proved there’s an audience begging for this sequel. And with the anime industry now booming and Netflix gobbling up manga properties, Disney’s sitting on a franchise with huge potential.
So yeah. It’s happening. Not tomorrow. But it’s happening. And if Cameron can juggle Pandorans while setting up a third Alita, fans can stay patient. Just maybe not another six years.
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