Square Pictures

Background
Square Pictures was a CGI animation studio formed in 1997 as a subsidiary of Japanese game developer SquareSoft. The company worked heavily on producing a Final Fantasy movie that would use groundbreaking computer graphics and photorealistic characters. That film would eventually become Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, distributed by Columbia Pictures. Square had incredibly lofty ambitions for the film, using beyond state-of-the-art computers and animation for the time and envisioning the film's lead character Aki Ross becoming a "virtual actress" (in the same vein as Laura, from Kenji Eno's D series). The film's budget ballooned from $75 million to a staggering $137 million, due to the expenses of said computers as well as the costs of running the studio, as it was located in Honolulu, Hawaii, and it took years to develop. The film was completed and released in 2001 to mixed critical reception, with the visuals almost unanimously praised but the story and writing (a sci-fi plot with no ties to, or the feel of, any previous Final Fantasy games) being criticized, and grossed only $32 million in North America and $85 million worldwide. The failure of the film almost caused Square's pending merger with Enix to be called off altogether, and Square Pictures produced one more project (Final Flight of the Osiris, a part of The Animatrix) before being closed in January 2002. (The merger thankfully later happened in 2003, due to the success of Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts.)

(July 11, 2001)
Logo: On a black background, we see the grayish text "S Q U A R E P I C T U R E S" fly down and place itself in the middle of a white rectangle. The rectangle is seen at a right angle at first, before moving to the center. As the logo zooms out, it turns from 3D to 2D.

FX/SFX: The text flying and logo rotating.

Music/Sounds: None.

Availability: Rare. Seen only on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Editor's Note: None.