In 2001, a daring sci-fi film was released, but the risk didn’t pay off. Despite the advanced depiction of computer-animated humans, the result flopped at the box office
In the history of cinema, there are countless examples of films that failed financially and became mega-flops for studios. Expensive blockbusters that can’t even begin to recoup their costs are particularly damaging. One example from the sci-fi genre, which our international sister site AlloCiné has now broken down again, is Final Fantasy – The Powers Within You from 2001.
Final Fantasy film became one of the heaviest flops in recent cinema history
The sci-fi film by director Hironobu Sakaguchi is based on the video game series of the same name by the former studio Square. Similar to the original, the film adaptation was to be completely computer-animated. What was new at the time was that the artificial depiction of people in the cinema in particular was to reach a level of quality never seen before.
The expense was correspondingly high and so the Final Fantasy film ended up with a proud budget of around 130 million dollars, to which another 30 million was added for marketing.
Watch another German trailer for the Final Fantasy film from 2001 here:
According to Box Office Mojo, the sci-fi flick only grossed a good 85 million dollars at the global box office, which resulted in an inflation-adjusted loss of 120 million dollars for the studio. Developer Square, which had not yet merged with its main Japanese competitor Enix at the time, was facing financial ruin as a result of this disastrous result
