Long before we’d ever heard of Avatar, James Cameron was developing Battle Angel. Indeed, until he decided to go off to Pandora, for a long time it was though it was going to his next movie. His plan to make Battle Angel was then pushed even further back when he committed to Avatar 2 & 3. Indeed many wondered if Cameron had so much on his plate that he’d dropped Battle Angel altogether.
However now he’s promised that it is still in the pipeline, but don’t expect it for a few years yet. TheFilmStage reports that at Mexico City’s tech-fest TagDF, Cameron revealed that the plan is still to make the film after Avatar 3.
At the moment it seems that he’s planning to start heavy development on the movie in 2017, which is likely to be while he’s still busy finishing off the third Avatar movie.
Battle Angel is a Manga adaptation about a damaged female cyborg who is revived but has no memories. Once rebuilt, she discovers she has instinctive knowledge of martial arts and sets out to discover more about her past, which takes her into a world of brutal sports and organised crime.
However with the way Cameron works, if development restarts in 2017 it’s unlikely we’ll get the movie before 2020. That said, with the years he’s been mulling over the project, he may be able to move a little quicker than he normally does (he’s previously done test reels for the film, so there’s plenty of work already done).