Predicting The Success Of The Next 10 Major Comic Book Movies

10. Alita: Battle Angel (December 21, 2018)

Predicted Rotten Tomatoes Score: 33% Predicted Box Office: $200m

Alita: Battle Angel seems like a massive gamble from 20th Century Fox. Originally developed by James Cameron for close to a decade as a directorial project, Cameron has stepped back into the role of producer/co-writer and handed the reins over to Robert Rodriguez.

While it's easy to imagine James Cameron at the helm of a $200m sci-fi blockbuster, Rodriguez seems like a strange fit. After all, this is a guy who literally shoots a lot of his movies in his own backyard and usually has complete creative control over every aspect of his work, now trying to marshal a hugely-ambitious mega-budget production over twice as expensive as anything the filmmaker has ever made before.

So no pressure then.

The two trailers have shown glimpses of impressively large-scale world-building, but the story beats seem very familiar and the hybrid of live-action and CGI doesn't seem fully convincing. Recent history is littered with ambitious and expensive sci-fi projects that have struggled to connect with both critics and audiences alike including A Wrinkle in Time, John Carter, Ghost in the Shell, Valerian, Jupiter Ascending and even Blade Runner 2049.

All of the movies listed above wound up earning between $131m and $284m at the box office, and Alita will likely end up falling somewhere within that spectrum, even with the marketing heavily playing up Cameron's involvement.

It doesn't help either that the release date puts it among some serious competition with Mortal Engines, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman and Bumblebee all competing for virtually the exact same audience in an incredibly stacked December marketplace.