Friend works toward Cameron's manga dream

Before James Cameron turned Avatar into the highest-grossing movie in history, he was working on a new kind of cinematic heroine with the film adaptation of manga series Battle Angel Alita.

The director behind The Terminator, Aliens and Titanic, the second-biggest hit of all time, had a franchise planned for Yukito Kishiro's graphic novels about a cyborg discovered on a garbage heap.

The runaway success of Avatar - $2.8 billion in worldwide ticket receipts - has led to four sequels being green-lit, so Cameron decided to give his 600-page Alita script to friend Robert Rodriguez.