Thank you to the International Press Academy for awarding Alita: Battle Angel with the Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects. Congrats to Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, Richie Baneham, Mike Cozens, Richard Hollander and the entire teams at both Weta Digital and Lightstorm Entertainment for this well deserved recognition.
Congratulations to Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri and the entire Alita: Battle Angel VFX team! Alita received the Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects, and Joe was awarded the Nikola Tesla Satellite Award for visionary achievement in filmmaking technology. Thank you to the International Press Academy for an amazing night!
Update: A video has been added to the Alita Army YouTube channel explaining how this image ended up being shared by Elon Musk. It’ll be embedded at the bottom of this post.
Tues, February 25, Elon Musk got the attention of of Twitter by posting a surprising image. It was a fan art of Alita photoshopped onto the side of a rocket. Naturally, we were excited about the tweet. The photoshop image was created by @JohnnySciFi using fan art from Francesco Canonico on Instagram (linked at the bottom of this post). @ChallengerST had been tweeting the image to Elon repeatedly since the summer of 2019. His persistence paid off.
As of this writing, Elon’s tweet has 98.7k likes. We’re hoping it reaches 99k for #99 (Alita)!
Comicbook.com published an article about Elon Musk’s tweet (while erroneously calling the cyborg Alita an android):
“If you looked at the rankings in January, Alita would still make the top 10, but just barely. However, an online group known as the #AlitaArmy started a kickstarter late last year to get enough funds to fly a plane over the Oscars requesting a sequel to the 2019 film…
It’s incredible to see that a fan campaign was able to both bring such attention to this franchise with a single stunt that Wikipedia traffic for the page even exceeds that of the top airing simulcasts…”
We’ve made our funding goal on the last day of the campaign. It’s been a great and memorable two months. Who knew we could fly a banner over the Oscars and give an amputee a prosthetic arm? The latter has yet to take place but with the funding met, it’s going to happen. The recipient of the arm will be chosen by Open Bionics and a special spokesperson will present the arm to them on behalf of the Alita Army. Thank you for all your support – financial and otherwise. You made this possible.
Link to the closed campaign page below:
What happens next: We will transfer the funds to the Open Bionics Foundation early next week. Why next week? Tilly Lockey, in association with Tainted Entertainment, will be presenting the Hero Arm to the recipient on behalf of the Alita Army. Tilly is currently on holiday and we believe it’s important to have her and her managers fully involved in the rest of the process.
The Open Bionics Foundation will begin the process of selecting the patient. This is a process that may take a few months. We will keep you updated on the progress as much as we can. Thanks again for your support. Stay tuned.
One of our most hotly anticipated busts dropped in 2020. Alita Battle Angel has an almost unrivalled fan base. The #Alitaarmy have been campaigning for a sequel for pretty much a year, culminating in a flyover at the Oscars. It was incredible to see this amazing support spill over into our art. With an entire army behind us, we knew we had to make something special.
After much anticipation, at the end of December we revealed the special edition heart, and then followed up in January with the full bust reveal. Again, the Army was out in full force. Tweeting, sharing and commenting on what’s turned out to be one of our best busts yet.
Queen Studios
The Alita: Battle Angel 1:1 busts are still available. Visit the Queen Studios website for more:
Rosa posted on her Instagram that she has been sick for the past 24 hours with food poisoning. We are thinking about her. Maybe, if she sees this post, these two videos by the Alita Army will help her recovery! ♥
Swan Song (sung by the Alita Army)
A beautiful Berserker arm for our Battle Angel, Rosa
And rest assured we are still out there trying to share Alita with the world and pushing for that sequel.
We are celebrating the one year anniversary of the opening weekend of Alita: Battle Angel. The celebration has already kicked off on Twitter. Make sure that you use this opportunity to remember all the fun you had being an Alita “Stan” and holding on to hope – against all odds – that Alita will get a sequel soon. Let other people who have never watched Alita before see what’s beautiful about Alita and why being part of this #AlitaArmy movement is a special experience. It may just be the nudge they need to convince them to watch the movie.
Part of our #AlitaAnniversary celebration is a video created by @Bozilla4 on Twitter. It features the voices of many of the #AlitaArmy community doing a cover of Dua Lipa’s “Swan Song”, from the Alita: Battle Angel movie soundtrack. The video is linked below. Enjoy!
The banner flew over Disney Studios HQ in Burbank before heading to the Dolby Theater where the Academy Awards were held.
After a successful flight, undeterred by less than ideal weather, many people took to Twitter to share their reactions to the “#AlitaSequel #AlitaArmy” banner flying high above their city. One such person was the famous YouTube vlogger, Jessica Chobot:
“DAMN. That is some passion for Alita. #AlitaSequel #Oscars”
Jessica Chobot wasn’t the only famous person to react – Elle Lamont, the actress who played Screwhead in Alita: Battle Angel, shared her thoughts on Instagram:
And Alita herself (well, she’s Alita to us) also reacted:
We were extremely happy to see the reaction of Rosa Salazar, the star of Alita: Battle Angel. Her happiness means the world to us.
Update (February 13, 2028): Rosa Salazar makes an Instagram post giving the #AlitaArmy an Oscar for Outstanding Performance as a fan base.
But as happy as that made us, it wasn’t enough just to get responses from celebrities and other people on the ground; we needed to reach the eyes of the executives at Disney. We believe we have accomplished that. There were many, many articles written about the banner flight after word began to spread on Twitter almost virally.
Screenshots of a news search for “Alita: Battle Angel”
And from that came a response from Jon Landau, a producer on Alita: Battle Angel and the man who told us to keep “peppering” Disney with our requests for an Alita sequel:
“Thank you to The Alita Army for your never ending support and for making Alita: Battle Angel a unique part of the Oscars….” – Jon Landau
No doubt this event has reached the eyes and ears of the decision makers at Disney (and other studios, to be honest). It should give Cameron and Landau more leverage in their negotiations with Disney. But we’re not done yet. Stay tuned for more events and how you can contribute.
