Shane Black's THE PREDATOR isn't the only sci-fi action film 20th Century Fox has delayed this week, but while that film was only pushed back six weeks, Fox has given a more substantial delay to the Robert Rodriguez / James Cameron collaboration ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL.
ALITA has been pushed back five months, leaving its July 20th summer release for a December 21st winter release.
That's not such a bad date to have – it's the same time that Cameron's films TITANIC and AVATAR were released, and those did pretty well at the box office.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez from a script he worked on with Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is a live action adaptation of a popular manga about
a female cyborg that is discovered in a scrap yard by a scientist. With no memory of her previous life except her deadly martial-arts training, the woman becomes a bounty hunter, tracking down criminals.
The film stars Rosa Salazar as the cyborg Alita; Christoph Waltz as Alita's mentor; Mahershala Ali as two different characters, one of whom is Vector, who "runs and fixes matches in a gladiator-style combat game called Motorball"; Keean Johnson as Alita's love interest Hugo, who teaches her how to play Motorball; Jennifer Connelly as one of the villains; Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as a friend to Hugo; Jackie Earle Haley and Ed Skrein as villainous cyborgs; Leonard Wu as another cyborg; Lana Condor as an orphaned photographer; Marko Zaror as Motorball player Ajakutty; Michelle Rodriguez as the cyborg Gelda, who is a mother figure to Alita in the manga; and Eiza González as a mystery character.
A trailer for ALITA was released a couple months ago. Check it out below, and start figuring out how you're going to fill the ten months that are left before the movie arrives in theatres.