Alita: Battle Angel Will Include Motorball!

Michael here. MTV has been on quite a roll with their news on James Cameron's adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita. First they had Jon Landau revealing that "Alita" would follow Avatar 2, and that he would like to title it Alita: Battle Angel. Now Landau confirms talk from long ago that the movie will include the sport of Motorball:

From MTV:

“We’re trying to pick what is the best story to tell,” explained Landau, who has served as Cameron’s producer on both “Avatar” and “Titanic."

“It’s sort of like when you do a biopic; you can’t really do a biopic that goes from cradle to grave," he said. "You have to pick out what is the important section in that person’s life, to tell that story.”

And in their “biopic” on the rescued robotic warrior Alita, Cameron and Landau plan to focus on the earlier part of her life.

“I think we’ll tend to err on the earlier side, because it is the more fascinating side where Alita’s lost her memory and she doesn’t know where she comes from,” he explained. “And it’s when she discovers where she comes from, she’s terrified of it and doesn’t believe that that’s who she really is.”

Landau is also partial to that period in Alita’s life because it will give him the chance to see his favorite element on the big-screen.

“If people are familiar with the series at all, there’s something they call Motorball,” Landau said of the one aspect of “Alita” that he’s most eager to see Cameron capture. “That is something that Jim has always been dynamically excited about. It’s racing on a super track, with characters that are built and created in the cyborg world to race against each other in an arena.”

“It’s almost like a gladiator match meets an Indy 500 race,” Landau added. “[Their mode of battle] depends on who they are. It depends how they’ve been modified as cyborgs; they’re not in cars — it’s their physical being that is out there. Some of them are on roller skates — and Alita participates in this, and she’s on roller blades, while other people might have different devices. It’s a wonderful, rich world to design and develop.”

Landau's comments jive with pre-Avatar quotes from Cameron that said that "Alita" would pull the Motorball story forward into the Alita, Hugo, and Ido story. Sounds like they are sticking to their plans. The Motorball arc of the original Battle Angel series has the most completely insane action imaginable, and seeing it given the big budget S3D treatment will be amazing.