Posts: 595
From:Carpinteria, CA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted August 01, 2000 07:32 AM            

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As reported in today's Animation Artist Magazine, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the film cost $100 million to make. The director says it is "a big gamble" and can greatly damage Square, Inc. if it doesn't succeed. What are your thoughts?

Joe Tracy

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Posts: 774
From:State of Influx
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 01, 2000 07:55 AM            

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A long time ago, Square was a small company on the verge of bankruptcy. What saved Square was of course, Final Fantasy I.

Today Square is a very large company with branches around the world. The Final Fantasy series has become a brand name with RPGs. Any video game console company that has Square working for them is considered bless.

If there is a chance that the Final Fantasy movie fails, I don't think the movie will destroy Square. They might consider scaling back their operations a bit and focus their attention back on games.

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Posts: 564
From:Valley Glen, Ca., U.S.A
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 01, 2000 11:05 AM            

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Squaresoft is a pretty big company, but it definatly doesn't have a name in the industry like Disney. The biggest costomers are most likely to be fans of the game series, and teenagers to adults (ages 12 - 40..something like that). 100 million dollars is a lot of money to go flushing down the tubes. This movie will need a fairly good marketing campaign to make a good profit.
It looks like it's going to be a good movie, but for me, it doesn't sound like a success at this point.

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Posts: 543
From:NJ
Registered: Nov 1999

posted August 01, 2000 12:26 PM            

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I dunno, photorealistic CGI "actors" is hard thing to mess up hype-wise. I think it'll be kind of hard to go wrong hyping this movie if they talk up the technical aspect of it. I don't think it'll be that hard a sell. And if it has a good story, it gets good word of mouth...even better.

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Brian Edgerton, Future Animator
.....................................................................................
"Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive"
--Walt Disney

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Posts: 14
From:SoCal
Registered: Jun 2000

posted August 01, 2000 12:45 PM            

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I think that this movie will do just fine. The people look so realistic (something that we haven't really seen in any mainstream CG movies). The game Final Fantasy VII has sold more than 6 million copies and in Japan sold 3 million copies in the first two days. So I really think that the movie will do great over seas and here.

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Posts: 69
From:Amsterdam
Registered: May 2000

posted August 01, 2000 02:41 PM            

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One word: MARKETING!
If the movie is marketed right, it will do fine, if not, it will fail. It's as simple as that.
Sure, it's a great gamble and if FF fails, Square Feature Animation goes down the same way as Fox did.
But I wouldn't worry about the other Square divisions. With their PS2 games, they will earn the lost money back.

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 01, 2000 03:35 PM            

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Even if Final Fantasy the Movie is overlooked here, I bet it would do great business in Japan.

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Posts: 425
From:hull, quebec, canada
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 01, 2000 07:40 PM            

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I'd say the movie is far from being a sure shot. Even if the marketing is done well it will still need strong word of mouth to make a profit. And with a budget so high, that will be no walk in the park.

I mean they need to make a hundred million dolars just to break even, and other well known titles have had trouble achieving that much in the past. I do hope it does well, but I really don't see it raking in that much cash.

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Posts: 774
From:State of Influx
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 01, 2000 07:57 PM            

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All I know is the Final Fantasy series is very popular in Japan. Before Final Fantasy IX came out in Japan, there was already 1 million preorders for the game. When Final Fantasy IX came out, the game sold 2 million copies easily. (The sales did sagged a bit because of typhoon that was heading to Japan.)

As Samus Aran said, if the Final Fantasy movie doesn't do well in America, it will probably do well in Japan.

By the way, is Sony behind the Final Fantasy movie?

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Posts: 144
From:
Registered: Feb 2000

posted August 01, 2000 11:01 PM            

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I'm not much on video games, but I don't think this movie can miss (unless it's completely terrible). One or two years ago the video game business got larger than the movie business (the former grossed something like $7 billion world wide, compared to about $6.5 billion for all movies combined). When you figure that this is an incredibly well-know and well-liked game, and that it's the first of it's kind, I think it will have huge openings here and elsewhere. Look how big X-Men opened. The number of real X-Men fans is a fraction of the Final Fantasy fans, and the number of comic book fans is a tiny fraction of the video game fans. And even people who aren't into video games may go for the science fiction or CG animation aspects of this film. I think this comes under the "presold" classification of films, like the Rugrats movie. It already has killer word of mouth, before the marketing has even begun.

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Posts: 130
From:Ellensburg, WA USA
Registered: Feb 2000

posted August 02, 2000 07:54 AM            

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I have never claimed to be an expert on movie finances, some of that stuff is confussing as all get out. But I remember reading something once you factor in the costs of marketing and all the other stuff involved in making movies (every little executive along the way has to have his cut), that a film has to make twice as much as it cost to make just to break even. So this film has got to top 200 million to get into the black.

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Posts: 4
From:
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 02, 2000 09:05 AM            

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I think the film will have a big opening weekend, but huge dropoff after that. So, far the film doesn't look promising outside of the effects and eye-candy.

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~Durango~

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 02, 2000 09:18 AM            

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Previous science fiction movies (Battlefield Earth, Titan AE) haven't done so hot. Although that could be because those two just weren't very good... Final Fantasy and video game fans will want this movie to be nothing short of a sweeping epic, after all, that's what the games provided.
I didn't expect X-Men to have such a big opening, so I think FF could have a similar big opening too, with all the fans wanting to see it as soon as it appears in theaters. Whether it stays around depends how good the story is. But if this movie is anywhere near the level of the games (epic, imaginative, and with deep characters), I don't think it can miss.

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Posts: 144
From:
Registered: Feb 2000

posted August 03, 2000 12:00 AM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by streep:
I have never claimed to be an expert on movie finances, some of that stuff is confussing as all get out. But I remember reading something once you factor in the costs of marketing and all the other stuff involved in making movies (every little executive along the way has to have his cut), that a film has to make twice as much as it cost to make just to break even. So this film has got to top 200 million to get into the black.

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It is confusing, and a little different on every film. Your comment about a film making twice as much to break even is in the ballpark. Here's briefly how it works. About half of the theater grosses comes back to the studio (on some sure-fire hits the studio will force the exhibitor to give a bigger cut in the opening weeks, but that's not common). Therefore, a film needs to make about double it's cost. However, since marketing can now cost $25-35 million for a very big release, that still might not be enough. But then there's income from pay TV, regular TV, and the windfalls of video/DVD. And of course there's foreign theater grosses, which commonly are about the same as the domestic grosses (a film that makes $100 million here will usually make $80-120 million foreign).

So if FF cost $100 million to make, and if they spend $30 million on marketing and $10 million on distribution and prints, they need total worldwide theater grosses of around $280 million to break even on the theatrical release. However, the studios make a profit of about $10 on each video and a little more on each DVD, so if it later sells 10 million videos (the top Disney titles sell over 30 million, more moderate hits like Prince of Egypt around 8-10 million units), then that's $100 million in profit right there. They'll also get a few million each from pay TV and from network TV. And you have to factor in the fact that the film will serve as a giant advertising platform for the company, the game, and the merchandise, which is worth millions. So in the end if FF makes $100 million in domestic theaters it will be well on it's way to turning a decent profit.

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Posts: 329
From:Decepticon HQ, planet Cybertron
Registered: Jun 2000

posted August 03, 2000 08:10 AM            

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There's also the matter of Hollywood's infamously fraudulent accounting practices. When the first Batman movie came out, it was the fifth-highest grossing film of all time, yet Warner Bros. financial statement claimed that the movie had lost millions. ( There was even a lawsuit with the film's executive producers attached this crooked bookkeeping.)
In more recent years on CNN, I remember hearing that Hollywood was working on cleaning up its image regarding this arcane accounting routine. Naturally, since we are talking about Hollywood, I remain skeptical.

[This message has been edited by GALVATRON (edited August 03, 2000).]

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Posts: 144
From:
Registered: Feb 2000

posted August 03, 2000 11:50 PM            

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The accouting practices you're talking about won't have an effect of FF making a profit. In fact, they make it MORE likely that the studio who made the film will actually profit. That's because those accounting games are internal, by the studio who made the film. It's a trick used to avoid having to pay profit participants (like the actor or writer who might get 5% of the net profit, for example). You can be sure a film like FF, which isn't dependent on name actors or writers, doesn't have any profit participants.

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Posts: 329
From:Decepticon HQ, planet Cybertron
Registered: Jun 2000

posted August 04, 2000 09:02 AM            

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Yes, the lawsuit in question involved profit splitting ("points"). I remember Letterman or someone once saying half-jokingly: "If we were to believe Hollywood accountants, no film in the history of cinema has ever made a dime."

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Posts: 774
From:State of Influx
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 07, 2000 03:51 PM            

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I am surprised nobody bought it up.

What does Final Fantasy the movie has to do with Final Fantasy the video game?

For anybody that is unfamilar with the video game series, the Final Fantasy video game dealt with fantasy elements like magic spells, chocobo birds, and Mog creatures.

The Final Fantasy movie seem to have none of those fantasy elements. Instead Final Fantasy movie looks strictly like a science fiction movie.

Looks like Square is just using the "Final Fantasy" title as a brand name.

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Posts: 440
From:Chicago IL, USA
Registered: Feb 2000

posted August 07, 2000 05:41 PM            

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Nobody brought it up because while many of the Final Fantasy games have similar elements, each one is a separate story. Final Fantasy VIII has absolutely nothing to do with Final Fantasy VII and so on. You won't find any characters from FF VIII in FF IX. Square has been using the Final Fantasy name as a brand on RPG's of a similar style with constant upgrades along the way. Since each game is separate, why wouldn't Square make the movie separate from the game?

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Posts: 285
From:Home
Registered: Jul 2000

posted August 07, 2000 06:47 PM            

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If you look at each game out of the Final Fantasy series no one game is alike. The mogs were taken out of some, magic has drastically changed from learning a spell to junctioning one, to using materia. I think the movie has the same plot (saving the world from destruction) as the games. Well not the EXACT same plot, (you know what I mean). To tell you the truth I am looking forward to the movie because I've played all of the Final Fantasty games.

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Posts: 2
From:Ohio
Registered: Jul 2000

posted August 08, 2000 01:29 AM            

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According to the director Sakaguchi, the movie is simply an extension of the game series, and after reading a little info on the movie's story, it does sound very true to the themes represented in the games. That said, the movie is simply following the same tradition as the games, so in a sense its not really based on a particular video game, merely inspired from the series.

In the end, the FF series are about stories of humanity overcoming both epic conflicts while dealing with our own personal demons that every person has. Thats really what the core theme of the series is. Not magic, chocobo's or summoning spells. Usually things like that are related to the gameplay more then the actual story anyway.

[This message has been edited by Deep Eyes (edited August 12, 2000).]

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Posts: 285
From:Home
Registered: Jul 2000

posted August 08, 2000 01:51 PM            

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Too bad the movie won't have these cuties

[This message has been edited by Anime_chick3000 (edited August 08, 2000).]

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Posts: 564
From:Valley Glen, Ca., U.S.A
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 08, 2000 06:23 PM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by Anime_chick3000:
[B]
/[B]

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What the heck is THAT THING???

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Posts: 774
From:State of Influx
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 08, 2000 06:38 PM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike2D:
What the heck is THAT THING???

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It's a chocobo Mike2D.

You probably don't know what this is either:

[This message has been edited by RZetlin (edited August 08, 2000).]

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 08, 2000 08:49 PM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike2D:
What the heck is THAT THING???

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A chocobo is sort of Squaresoft's mascot. It's an ostrich-like yellow bird used for transportation in almost all Final Fantasy games. The cute bird was so popular it even has its own games now (Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, Chocobo Racing). It is a very well known video game icon. Here is a drawing of a chocobo used for Final Fantasy VII:

The white thing RZeltin posted is a moogle. They sort of resemble koala bears with bat wings and are also uber-popular. I think both creatures are the creations of the talented Yoshitaka Amano. Here is a moogle sketch of his that he made for Final Fantasy VI (FF 3 in the U.S.):

There's a whole mythology behind the Final Fantasy series that is worth getting acquainted with.

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Posts: 774
From:State of Influx
Registered: Oct 1999

posted August 13, 2000 07:28 PM            

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There's an Final Fantasy article from MSNBC.

In the article, Final Fantasy has been refered to as "...the Disney of the future."

Any comments on this?

[This message has been edited by RZetlin (edited August 13, 2000).]

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted November 16, 2000 09:16 AM            

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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within trailer.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/columbia/final_fantasy/

What do you think?
I'm a little worried that they're making it out to be an action movie and it won't have the mysticism of the Final Fantasy legacy. But we don't know much about the story yet... It will definitely be interesting to see how it stacks up against the games.

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Posts: 543
From:NJ
Registered: Nov 1999

posted November 17, 2000 09:44 AM            

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The article isnt up anymore I guess, but that's the dumbest quote I ever heard....

What's it sposta mean???

------------------
Brian Edgerton, Future Animator
.....................................................................................
"Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive"
--Walt Disney

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted November 17, 2000 10:06 AM            

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I think the quote is another gross overstatement by the media, right up there with "2-D animation is dead" or "All anime is violent and explicitly s!exual". What the animators in Honolulu are trying to make is totally different from Disney.

[This message has been edited by Samus Aran (edited November 17, 2000).]

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Posts: 16
From:Riverside, California, USA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted November 22, 2000 04:03 PM            

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All,

I have not played any of the Final Fantasy Games but I am going to see this movie anyway. So far what I have seen from the trailers and teaser clips that this film, no matter how it relates or doesn't relate to the games, will kick some serious butt.

The animation is breath taking, the movement is right on, and the voice actors are well known. This will be one movie that will burn it's mark on Hollywood and all that see it.

I will be in the theater supporting Square with their going ahead with such a bold move as a video game company.

HelixDaKat

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted December 09, 2000 10:10 AM            

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The composer of the score of the movie has been announced. From rpgamer.com:

"Square's first foray into feature-length cinematics, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, now has a confirmed composer. Rather than adding to Nobuo Uematsu's already-heavy workload, the bid has fallen to veteran film scorer Elliot Goldenthal. Goldenthal's film credits include Batman Forever, Interview with the Vampire, Sphere, and Time to a Kill, plus several others."

(Nobuo Uematsu is the composer for the scores of the Final Fantasy games.)

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted December 15, 2000 09:01 AM            

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No one seems to have really noticed, but at www.finalfantasy.com you can now see pictures of all the major characters in the film. It's in the voice talent.
By moving the mouse over each actor's face, the image is replaced with a picture of their character. But, the characters look so realistic, it's almost like they are giving the voices to other people. In spite of the realism, you can tell that the faces have been designed to elect a certain emotional response from the viewer. I wouldn't call them stereotypical, but it's as if you can tell something about the characters by looking at their faces. Is this due to the research of the animators, or our natural inclination to make first impressions on real people we first meet, or both?
In the big trailer, the human characters move a little too smoothly to be mistaken as real people, but overall I thought it looked nice. It has this sense of alternate reality, or hyper-realism. I don't think Final Fantasy is going to be mistaken as live-action, but it has its own feeling to it, like watching a detailed dream.
I can only hope the plot and characters are good, but at the least the movie will be a surreal spectacle.

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Posts: 724
From:Menlo Park, CA USA
Registered: Oct 1999

posted December 15, 2000 09:53 AM            

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Looks like they really channeled Ben Affleck for the Alec Baldwin character...

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Posts: 425
From:hull, quebec, canada
Registered: Oct 1999

posted December 15, 2000 10:59 PM            

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I'm really not impressed with the whole "let's make it as realistic as possible" thing they have going in this movie. The designs are basically replicas of real humans. They might have well just have scanned in the voice talent themselves.

To me it just seems like it's humans voicing other humans, except in a computer. What's next, Ben Affleck voiced by Jack Nicholson!?

Can someone tell me what the point is in
making a film with real looking characters voiced by real people?????

Hummm, ranting mode off.....

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted December 17, 2000 11:12 AM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by D.E.P:

Can someone tell me what the point is in
making a film with real looking characters voiced by real people?????

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I think the aim of the movie isn't to make everything photo-realistic, but to make a super-detailed version of something appropriate to what's been seen in Final Fantasy games. Hm... If you can get a chance to see the in-game movies of Final Fantasy 8 (playstation), you'll notice that they look a lot like what's going into this movie, only they are less detailed and more obviously computer graphics. I think that this movie is being created as one humongous ultra-detailed scene that you might see in a Final Fantasy game. If real actors or backgrounds were used, it would no longer be visually connected to Final Fantasy.
But since the CGI in playstation games really isn't good enough quality for a real movie, they're trying to increase the quality as much as they can. I don't think they're trying to compete with live-action films... It's more like they're making the ultimate Final Fantasy in-game movie, without the game. Can it work? The plots of the games were great, so we'll have to see if it can be translated successfully into a feature film.

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Posts: 595
From:Carpinteria, CA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted February 14, 2001 07:43 PM            

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Well, we now know - from http://www.animationartist.com/News/2001/Feb01_02.html#Feb14 - that the final cost of the movie was 137 million without marketing costs (which will fall solely on the shoulder of Columbia Pictures). In addition, the film is based in the future versus the past (like the majority of Final Fantasy games) and is reportedly aiming for a PG-13 rating.

I have yet to see a groundswelling for this film like there was for Dinosaur so hopefully we see some big trailers and marketing efforts real soon.

It has also been revealed that a sequel is in the works that will be set in the same environment.

Joe Tracy

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Posts: 739
From:Syracuse, NY
Registered: Oct 1999

posted February 15, 2001 09:53 AM            

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quote:

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Originally posted by Joe Tracy:
In addition, the film is based in the future versus the past (like the majority of Final Fantasy games) and is reportedly aiming for a PG-13 rating.
Joe Tracy

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Almost all of the Final Fantasy games (there are nine official ones) have a midieval setting. Only two of the most recent games, Final Fantasy 7 and 8 for Playstation, took a more futuristic turn than normal. Final Fantasy 9 returned to the "past" style of the series. The Final Fantasy movie resembles Final Fantasy 8 (which is its contemporary) but not the rest of the series as much.
I too hope Square starts promoting the film more visibly sometime, but I think among science fiction and video game fans there is already a strong buzz. They have been playing the trailer in the theater and the film isn't out until July.

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