Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within — the $137M film that sank Square Pictures

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was Square's attempt to put its RPG maker's name on the big screen: a fully computer-animated science-fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series, whose photorealistic ambitions became the movie's entire marketing story.

The budget grew to a reported $137 million — the most expensive video-game film of its time — but the result was a drama about a scientist hunting a ghost-like alien presence, not the action story game fans expected. It opened in July 2001 and grossed about $85 million worldwide; The Independent reported the film failed to cover its $145 million cost.

Square Pictures was shut down: the company announced the studio's closure in early 2002, with the Honolulu studio closing on March 31. The failure also delayed Square's long-considered merger with Enix, which was only completed in 2003 — Enix hesitated to merge with a company that had just lost a fortune on a movie.

The film is remembered as the moment a game company mistook its brand for a movie franchise, and as the standard example of a vanity project whose marketing never matched its audience.