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Shared Universe with The Expanse
Alita: Battle Angel and The Expanse share the same universe, with Alita being set a few more hundred years in the future.
A sequel, if it gets made, will hugely compress the events of the original manga, and rush to The Last Order
The way Alita is openly antagonistic against Zalem in this continuity makes it very unlikely that she'll ever work for them, so it's unlikely her adventures in the wasteland will be adapted. Furthermore, the movie placing Nova in Zalem, as their leader, seems to point the future in that direction. Nova may even get merged with Mbadi's character, with Zalem standing in for LADDER as a whole.- Jossed by Word of God - the next film is going to cover the Motorball arc up to Alita vs. Jashugan, if it gets made.
- Motorball arc precedes the TUNED arc, so it's still not completely out of question yet.
The sequel will see Nova enhance Jashugan in order for him to fight Alita
calling back to his manga backstory, and also allowing Nova to have a continuing roll in the Motorball arc. Setting up Jashugan as his new champion, even one who contrasts Vector and Grewishka by having his own independent motives, would allow the main conflict of the story to stay in focus. Particularly with Jashugan's death being the conclusion of this arc but allowing Nova to once again be out of reach.Zapan will reappear in the sequel
He's still alive and in better shape than his manga counterpart was, and likely even angrier. Nova could potentially arm him with berserker tech or his own alternative to send him against Alita. This could all be set up as a subplot happening concurrently with the motorball arc, only for Nova to bring in Zapan as an ace in the hole towards the end of the film. The subsequent destruction of Iron City and potentially killing Ido would be a massive left field twist and or Downer Ending, setting up a third installment.Flashback Nova and current Nova are not the same person.
Current Nova is actually a clone or a distant descendant.- While Manga!Nova is younger than the Film!Nova (he basically just looks like his real age), one of the most direct and immediate results of his research was him indeed becoming functionally immortal, as in almost impossible to kill, and he revives then anyway. So this assumption is simply not necessary. In the manga setting, the indefinite life was known in the Earth Sphere even before the war, Nova just added the revival twist.
If there is a sequel Chiren will still appear.
Her heart and especially her brain appear to be in some sort of life-support system. Ido has already demonstrated the ability to rebuild entire bodies. Alita knows where her brain is stored and Vector never had the chance to send it up to Nova before being killed. Provided you can hook all the casing up properly, no reason she couldn't be revived as a full-conversion cyborg.In the eventual sequel we'll have a scene where Nova has some flan in Alita's presence
And her WTF reaction will make it hilarious.