Tetsuya Nomura: Japan is September 14th, around the same time as the U.S. release. It might not be exactly simultaneous, but it would be less than a month later.

1UP: Will the Japanese version be in Japanese and the U.S. version in English?

Tetsuya Nomura: Sony Pictures are actually going to be distributing the product, so from their standpoint, as a DVD product, they will have the standard for this type of product, featuring both English and Japanese language.

1UP: How did the subsequent showings at film festivals go? I met up with you and your team in Venice, but didn’t see how the reaction at the Montreal Film Festival went.

Tetsuya Nomura: Well for me personally, I was only able to attend the Venice Film Festival and they also showed it at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which was after Montreal. So those were the only two I was able to attend, but our staff carried around their video cameras, and I was able to see the reactions at each of the locations. First and foremost I can tell that people’s reactions are very different in their own culture. It’s interesting to see how people react differently to different things, and having fans all around the world makes me realize how much love Final Fantasy VII has (the game), and how all these fans are just looking forward to and expecting huge things out of Advent Children. It’s been pretty overwhelming. I mean the film is making its way around the world, and seeing the reaction from each of the territories, I was kind of reminded how popular the Final Fantasy VII world and characters are. So it’s a completely different feeling that I have now.

1UP: Some of the scenes we saw in Venice look more exciting and flashier in the new trailer. Is this my imagination or did you revamp a lot of the material for the final version?

Tetsuya Nomura: Yeah, we’ve made adjustments since then. For the version that was shown at the Venice Film Festival we basically had to create something that was going to tell the story, but in a very short form. So I believe that was about 25 minutes. But there were some scenes, in order to tell that story, where we had to use what we had at that time. It was still in development, so there were a lot of adjustments we’ve made since then. The trailer that we’re showing right now is very close to the final product.

1UP: It’s sort of surprising that it hasn’t been picked up for a theatrical release, considering how it’s grown to such a high-quality feature-length film. Weren’t you looking into the possibility of a theatrical run before the DVD release?

Tetsuya Nomura: Well in Japan we’re actually in the midst of trying to plan something. It may not be as long as a feature film in terms of how many days it’s on screen, but we’re working on something. For the United States, Sony Pictures Entertainment is our parAer, so it’s been a little difficult contractually and some other issues have affected our plans and this plan to have a theatrical release move forward. When we showed the almost final and current version within the company — we’ve done a few screenings — everyone’s reaction has been “We want to see it on a bigger screen,” so I think that will be the same reaction consumers will have once they purchase the DVD. So it is something we hope that we can do, but usually having a theatrical release is something that needs a lot of planning time. And now that we’ve come this far and all of a sudden we’re trying to put this all together, it’s been a little slow at times, but hopefully we can make something happen.

1UP: Advent Children was originally conceived as a 20-minute film, but now it’s, what, 100 minutes long? Any insights into 1) how it expanded into five times its original intended length, and 2) what sort of story did you think you were going to be able to stuff into the original 20 minutes? Lastly, what sort of extra material will be on the DVD?

Tetsuya Nomura: The 20 or so minute project was an experiment, and it just so happens that Final Fantasy VII’s story and world was the material that was going to be used for that project. So the story for that version that was written by Mr. Nojima [Kazushige Nojima, scenario writer for many of the Final Fantasy games], and there was a theme and that was Cloud’s story after the events of Final Fantasy VII. So now we had a theme and something we could work off of, and it became a bigger, larger, and “real” project, not just an experiment. That’s when we decided to start over from scratch and go away from what the experiment project was all about.

The reason for that is because the 20-minute version wasn’t going to fulfill an entertainment aspect. The story wasn’t going to be enough for it, and it was a very sort of clean and quiet and very beautiful drama. It was going to be very simple. It only had two characters or so. So we actually had to move away from that and have Mr. Nojima start over from scratch, and create a longer version of the story. But the theme that was used for the 20-minute version still remained the same thing; it was Cloud and his years after. So then it became a real project, and then new scenarios were added. I added a lot of direction. I knew some scenes that had to be included if we were going to move forward with that. So doing all that and going back to taking a look the 20-minute version, there were some scenes in particular that I really wanted to use in this longer version. So we went back, picked out the scenes we really wanted to use, and combined it into the longer version, and that’s how it became a lot longer than originally planned.

For the Japanese version of the product, we’ve announced some of the bonuses that are going to be added to the package. Because of the territorial issues and language options, we may be limited, but we do want to try and bring out as much of the bonus content that is going to be included in the Japanese version into the U.S. version. Aside from the Advent Children story and DVD, there may be some other material that the fans will really enjoy. So there may be some new visual material. The Japanese will get a standalone and limited version. Next month we’ll announce what the bonuses are going to be.

1UP: Well, we’ll be looking forward to it. Good luck finishing up Kingdom Hearts II and Advent Children, and the rest of your many, many projects. Thanks again for your time and for inviting us to talk during your busy schedule.