Director James Cameron's next film will be the science fiction epic Avatar, not the manga-based Battle Angel Alita.  20th Century Fox has approved a $200 million budget for Avatar, a science fiction saga set on a distant planet where humans battle aliens.  With the help of Weta Workshop and lots of mo-cap (motion capture) technology, Cameron hopes to create a photorealistic presentation of a completely original world.

Cameron plans to begin shooting the live action portion of the film (with actors) in April, and will probably finish editing that part of the film in November -- then comes at least a year and a half of special effects work before the film debuts in 2009.  Cameron told Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles that he hopes to 'telescope' his pre-production work on Battle Angel Alita into his post-production work on Avatar.  So it is clear that Cameron still wants to make Battle Angel Alita -- and the manga-based movie will undoubtedly benefit from the lessons he learns working on Avatar -- but it does appear that Battle Angel Alita won't debut before 2010 at the earliest (or more likely 2011, though predictions about when Cameron's films will debut are notoriously inaccurate see 'Battle Angel Alita in 2009').