Uphill Battle

Now that his 3-D sci-fi CGI action extravaganza Avatar is out director James Cameron looking ahead to his next project

Talking to MTV he discussed his long-talked about adaptation of Yukito Kishiro cyberpunk menga Battle Angel is still very much a possibility.

"We've got a very good script, we've done about a year of production design, and we've put together an art reel that shows the arc of the film," he says. "It's pretty much 'just add water' and we're ready to go."

Battle Angel Alita (Gun / Dream in Japan) is a nine-volume series from the 1990s, featuring an amnesiac female cyborg rescued from a scrap heap by a cybernetics professor, who rebuilds her so that she can become a kick-ass martial arts bounty hunter. The first two volumes became an anime in 1993, but Kishiro was never enthusiastic about it, and while it was well-received in the US and UK, it wasn't a success in Japan

The film would utilize 3-D/CGI tech as well

"Shooting live stuff in 3-D and then adding CG characters and landscapes beyond that is a little tricky," he says