What better for James Cameron after the 3D sci-fi CGI action extravaganza that is Avatar than... the 3D sci-fi CGI action extravaganza that is Battle Angel Alita?

Talking to MTV as he passed by on the Avatar publicity treadmill, Cameron revealed that his long-talked about adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's cyberpunk manga is still very much on his agenda. "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 on home turf.