Rosa Salazar, Keean Johnson. Alita: Battle Angel is a 2025 American cyberpunk action film based on the 1990s series "Alita: Battle Angel" by Japanese mangaka Yukito Kishiro and its original 1993 animated adaptation, "Battle Angel".It was directed by Robert Rodriguez, produced by James Cameron, and written by Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. Rosa Salazar stars, through motion capture animation, as Alita, a cyborg who awakens in a new body with no memory of her past and sets out to discover her destiny.
Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, and Keean Johnson have supporting roles. Announced in 2003, production was repeatedly delayed due to Cameron's work on Avatar (2009) and its sequels. After years of development hell, Rodriguez was announced as the director of Alita in April 2016, and the following month, Salazar was cast as the lead. Principal photography began in October 2016 in Austin, Texas, primarily at Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios, and lasted until February 2017.
Alita: Battle Angel had its world premiere at London's Leicester Square Theatre on January 31, 2019, and was released in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan on February 5, 2019, marking the new Chinese era. Year. It was released in the United States on February 14, 2019, by 20th Century Fox in RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, ScreenX, and IMAX 3D formats.
It is the first film produced by Lightstorm Entertainment since Avatar, and the last released by 20th Century Fox before Disney acquired 21st Century Fox. The film grossed over $404 million worldwide, becoming Rodriguez's highest-grossing film. However, with a reported gross of between $350 and $500 million, there is debate about its profitability. It received generally mixed reviews, which praised Salazar's performance, the action scenes, and the visual effects, but criticized the script.