Producer Jon Landau said in an MTV Splash Page video interview that he and director James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic, Terminator) want to adapt the earlier chapters from Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) manga into a 3D film — in particular, the Motorball sequences. He explained that the early parts of the cyborg girl's story tell the "more fascinating side where Alita's lost her memory and she doesn't know where she comes from. And it's when she discovers where she comes from, she's terrified of it and doesn't believe that that's who she really is."

Landau also described what "excites" the producer/director team about the Motorball sequences with cyborg characters racing and dueling against each other: "It's almost like a gladiator match meets an Indy 500 race. [Their mode of battle] depends on who they are. It depends how they've been modified as cyborgs; they're not in cars — it's their physical being that is out there."

Landau had previously said that Cameron would adapt Battle Angel after a sequel to the #1 all-time grossing film worldwide, Avatar. He added then that he and Cameron had been familiar with one of the manga volumes and the anime adaptation of Battle Angel, but screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Ghost in the Shell) introduced them to the other nine books in the manga.

Viz Media publishes the Battle Angel Alita manga and Kishiro's later Battle Angel Alita: Last Order story. ADV Films had released the anime adaptation on DVD.