Alita is such a physically demanding flick that the lead actress broke several ribs while filming
Rosa Salazar plays Alita, the titular cyborg heroine in the cyberpunk action film Alita: Battle Angel.
The manga movie Alita: Battle Angel has been 20 years in the making, and producer Jon Landau thinks it will finally represent the breakthrough success in Hollywood for a genre which has proved problematic.
“I think this is definitely the breakthrough one because of the story that Kishiro wrote,” said Landau, referring to Japanese author Yukito Kishiro, who wrote the graphic novels, or manga, upon which the movie is based.
“You know, other mangas that have not worked have been very Asian-centric in their world, and in their stories,” Landau said. “And Kishiro wrote a melting-pot world. He didn’t write a central character that was Asian. He wrote universal themes of discovery, of self-awareness, for these characters. And that’s what’s relatable to people across the globe.”
The film has an estimated budget of $200m and when it opens in February, Twentieth Century Fox will be hoping for a much better reception than Paramount’s 2017 flop Ghost in the Shell.
That manga movie didn’t seem to connect with audiences, grossing just $41m in the U.S. and $170m worldwide, with some critics accusing it of “whitewashing” after Scarlett Johansson was cast in the lead role.
Alita tells the story of cyborg Alita (Rosa Salazar) who awakens without memory in a dystopic world where she’s taken in by a compassionate father figure Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz). As she learns to navigate her new world, she begins to discover her latent fighting powers and develops feelings for street-smart Hugo (Keean Johnson).
Source – Channel24
