Hey, if you can figure out the script, you can shoot it!' So I took it home, spent all summer working on it, cut it down to 130, 125 pages, without cutting anything that he missed. When Avatar becomes the biggest movie of all time, he told me that he's going to spend the rest of his career making Avatars, so I said, 'What happens to Battle Angel then?', because as a fan I was just interested! And he said, 'I don't think I'll ever get to do that. Guys like Quentin Tarantino and Jim only write scripts for themselves to direct.
In an interview with Empire magazine on December 8, 2017, Rodriguez said of the collaboration with Cameron, "This just doesn't happen. Due to his prior commitments to direct the four sequels to Avatar (2009), Cameron could only serve as the producer and co-screenwriter on this film, with Rodriguez taking the directorial duties.
This marks the first professional collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez.