James Cameron’s Long Gestating Passion Project ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ Gets a Trailer (VIDEO)

Before Avatar essentially ended up consuming his life, James Cameron had a passion project he would happily tell anyone willing to listen all about. It was an adaptation of the Japanese Manga Battle Angel Alita, and it looks as though it's finally come to fruition, though Cameron is just serving as a producer at this point, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your opinion of him as a director.

I think it's impossible to argue that Cameron is a more technically proficient director than Robert Rodriguez—who once directed a movie he co-wrote with his eight year old son—the man who has been chosen to helm the film. And now we have our first look at the film and it looks... well, it looks like something else, that's for sure. 

Alita: Battle Angel has been slated into next summer's mid-July big budget bomb slot occupied by Valerian this past summer, and all you have to do is take just one look at it and you know instantly it's going to bomb. There's no chance this makes back its reported $200 million budget, let alone the cost to market and release it. I don't know if it would've been a better movie had James Cameron directed it, but I know for a fact I wouldn't be writing it off as a bomb sight unseen. Alita: Battle Angel opens on July 20, 2018.