Those who have been following the development of Alita: Battle Angel know that director Robert Rodriguez wasn’t the man who was supposed to direct it originally. The man who was supposed to be tasked with that was none other than the Avatar master himself, James Cameron. In fact, when it was revealed that the title of this film would be Alita: Battle Angel, it was joked that it was because Cameron liked having A’s in the titles of his movies (see: Avatar, Aliens, etc.).

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But now we know that it was not meant to be. Cameron get overloaded with the mythology of Avatar, and with it went his ability to direct the film in a timely manner. Speaking with Empire, director Robert Rodriguez delved into how he ended up taking the helm of this unique sci-fi adaptation.

“This just doesn’t happen. Guys like Quentin [Tarantino] and Jim [Cameron] only write scripts for themselves to direct. When Avatar becomes the biggest movie of all time, he told me that he’s going to spend the rest of his career making Avatars, so I said, ‘What happens to Battle Angel then?’ – because as a fan I was just interested! And he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get to do that. Hey, if you can figure out the script, you can shoot it!’ So I took it home, spent all summer working on it, cut it down to 130, 125 pages, without cutting anything that he missed. It was a great gift. We had a blast; anytime I had a question I could just call him or email him and he would send back these hugely detailed answers that were so helpful. He just loves being the producer that he always wants. The guy’s just so freakin’ smart. Getting to learn from someone like that was the greatest internship ever.”

So, those who were hoping to see Cameron take over for this one, it doesn’t sound like it would have ever been in the cards, thanks to Avatar’s success. with that in mind, we’re pretty grateful that this was a film that got made at all, especially since it’s looking to be quite a unique beast.

Do you think Cameron would have churned out a stronger film? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: Empire