>Mostly filmed in Austin, Texas at Rodriguez' Troublemaker Studios production company at an estimated production cost of over $200 million
>Robert Rodriguez:When I saw the original art that he made back in 2005 when he was going to make this film, he had Alita being photoreal with manga eyes, which is something you've never seen in a film before. Jim always presents something you've never seen before, whether it's the silver T-1000 or liquid metal, or the Titanic sinking, or a fully-realized race of people in Avatar…
>Robert Rodriguez:Even back in 2005, the visual effects (technology) were not there to do this, but he was going to do it anyway – to push the envelope to pull this off. We still haven't seen anything like this before, so we wanted to do something where manga fans get to see a movie that is a photo-real version of that world that we've only seen in comics, and never seen in real life.
>Robert Rodriguez: I did an interview with Crunchyroll earlier, and they asked my favorite anime.There have been many over the years, but just recently I got into it more, because now my kids are into it! I turned them on to different movies as they were growing up, but I guess they just watch anime on their phones. They were watching Crunchyroll on their phones, so I'd see stuff that they'd watch like Samurai Champloo and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I'm waay into JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! Waaay into that. Me and my boys, we make movies together now. I guess for us all to have the experience together, I'd like to make JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with them! I mean Jojo's just sucks me in, one episode after another! I tell them, you gotta shut this thing off, or I'll never get any work done!
If alita does well it could lead to western version of JJBA but it probably won't do well with the creepy visuals of trying to make anime real…