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Cameron Still Aims to Direct Battle Angel After Avatar 2/3

Director James Cameron told the Collider.com website this past weekend that he still intends to personally direct a film adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) manga. Because Cameron and 20th Century Fox plan to release two Avatar sequels on December 2014 and December 2015, the director said that he "had to consider, do I hand [Battle Angel] off to another director? And then I thought, 'No, I love it too much.'"

Cameron added that he plans to adapt "the spine story" of the manga with elements from the first four books. Specifically, he intends to include the deadly high-speed competition of Motorball from the third and fourth books, along with elements from the first two books. Cameron has been working on an adaptation of the manga since at least 2003, and he already commissioned a script and a year of design work.

Kishiro's manga ran in Shueisha's Business Jump magazine from 1990 to 1995, followed by the 1995-1996 follow-up Ashen Victor and the single-volume GUNNM: Other Stories. The story continued in 2001 with the retelling Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, which is currently on hiatus as the result of an issue between Kishiro and Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine. Kishiro plans to move the manga to another publisher, Kodansha. Viz Media has licensed all but Other Stories for release in North America. In 1993, Hiroshi Fukutomi adapted the manga into a two-episode original video anime (OVA) project, and ADV Films licensed the anime.

Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the news tip.