Alita: Battle Angel (live-action movie)

Despite casting her for what many consider to be a prototype of Battle Angel-Dark Angel-Cameron has opted not to consider Jessica Alba for the lead in the real Battle Angel film.

The film includes roughly 1,500 visual effects shots.

Prior to casting Rosa Salazar as Alita, other actresses considered for the role were Zendaya, Maika Monroe, and Bella Thorne.

Chiren was originally a character exclusive to the 1993 OAV.

Grewishka is based on Grewcica, a villain from the 1993 OAV who, in turn, was based on the manga villain Makaku.

Cameron first learned about the Gunnm manga through fellow film director Guillermo del Toro.

According to director Robert Rodriguez, he came up with the idea of giving Alita large eyes to stay true to the character's manga look, which he believed was absent in other live-action adaptations of anime and manga titles such as Ghost in the Shell. He commented: "If the eyes are the windows to the soul, we have some pretty big windows."

According to producer Jon Landau, he convinced Cameron to change the film's title from Battle Angel Alita to Alita: Battle Angel because "Jim only does T&A movies." This jokingly means that Cameron only makes films starting with the letters T (The Terminator, True Lies) or A (Aliens, Avatar).

In the original manga, Zalem and Scrap Iron City were located near Kansas City in the Kansas/Missouri border of the United States. For the film, Cameron moved the two cities to Panama City, Panama, as a space elevator would scientifically work near the Equator. As a result of this change, Iron City has Latin American architecture with color palettes indigenous to the region.

Cameron designed the cyborg criminal Nyssiana after a praying mantis.

While the film is live-action, the title character is done with CG animation and was then shot in 3-D, using the stereo imaging system that James Cameron has used for his documentaries.

Robert Rodriguez based the second Motorball sequence on that of NASCAR racing events. Instead of using aerial and impossible shots, he instead used the physics of real cameras in placements that are seen in NASCAR. It includes the usage of long lenses that capture things whizzing by, as well as cameras on the track with the players to keep it as "real" as possible. It was the longest sequence in the film that he worked on, it took roughly three years from the beginning to end.

There was more CGI geometry in just one of Alita's eyes than that of the entire character structure of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s 'Lord of the Rings' film series.