The first computer-generated animated motion picture with photo-realistic characters.
All backgrounds are hand painted.
Aki Ross was named #87 on Maxim Magazine's "Hot 100" list for 2001, and was featured on the cover of the supplemental insert. She is the only nonexistent person to date to make that list.
The total production time on the film was over four years. By the time the final shots were rendered, some of the earlier ones had to be redone because they didn't match anymore. Also, the software used to create them had become more advanced (and hence more detail was possible).
Due to the poor performance of the film at the box office, Square Pictures announced its "retirement" from the film business in October 2001. The studio did, however, go on to produce the short film Final Flight of the Osiris (2003) in a similar realistic CGI style to Final Fantasy, which played in theaters before Dreamcatcher (2003) and was released as the first of a series of short films entitled The Animatrix (2003).