Square Pictures was an animated movie studio formed in November 1997, with the aim of creating the "first computer-generated, animated motion picture with photo-real human characters".[1]
History[]
With the world-wide success of Final Fantasy VII, Square Pictures was created and based in Hawaii with the ambition of developing Square from a game developer to a wider entertainment company. A three film deal was reached with movie distribution company Columbia Pictures, with the first initially revealed to be Final Fantasy: The Movie, following in the game series's footsteps of introducing its own world and characters but with similar themes.
After four years of development, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released in 2001 to mixed reviews. The film took only $85 million at the international box office, compared to its $137 million budget. The company's second film was initially scheduled to be released in 2004,[2] but after the failure of The Spirit Within all subsequent plans were cancelled, and the company became a subsidiary of Square's previously established CGI animation studio, Visual Works.
Despite this a proof of concept was produced for the then upcoming short film collection, The Animatrix, a transmedia extension of the Wachowskis' 1999 feature film, The Matrix. This concept was produced using technology developed for The Spirits Within, featured the Aki Ross, and was designed to showcase how a choreographed fight scene could be realized in photo-realistic CGI. This led to the development of Final Flight of the Osiris, which featured in the final collection, and in 2003 was screened with the theatrical release of Dreamcatcher to promote The Animatrix as well as the subsequent Matrix feature films.
The majority of the English language cast for Final Flight of the Osiris have also voiced a number of Final Fantasy projects, including either Final Fantasy X and/or Final Fantasy X-2: Pamela Adlon, John DiMaggio, Rick Gomez, Tom Kenny, and Tara Strong. The Japanese voice cast also includes Akio Otsuka (大塚 明夫, Ōtsuka Akio?), and Makoto Yaumura (保村 真, Yasumura Makoto?)
References[]
- ↑ Mullen, Micheal (2000, April 28). "Final Fantasy: The Movie: Square and Columbia Pictures team up to bring one of gaming's biggest franchises to the silver screen.". From GameSpot. Archived from the original on 3 November 2020.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20161010184425/http://www.hawaiibusiness.com/finally-the-fantasy/