Share the fantasy: producer Chris Lee reveals how he hopes to tap into science fiction's gay fan base with the hunky computer-generated heroes of Final Fantasy. (video).

Producer Chris Lee reveals how he hopes to tap into science fiction's gay fan base with the hunky computer-generated heroes of Final Fantasy

Chris Lee would be the first to tell you that his being gay had nothing to do with his producing the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. But Lee certainly wanted to make sure last summer that if kids and video gamers were rushing to see the film--just released on video and as a "special edition" DVD--gays would be there along with them. "I argued during our marketing campaign that there is an enormous gay audience that appreciates science fiction," says Lee, "and it's an audience that Hollywood ignores at their peril."

One visit, to your local Star Trek convention is proof that, while the future that such TV shows present is apparently free of gays, the present fan base is filled with them. Yet the gay sci-fi connection has rarely been tapped, Lee notes. "I have a lot of gay friend in the industry that do science fiction, and they're just really into it," he says. "I don't know why; maybe it's the perfection. Maybe they're just hoping for a future that's different and where there's acceptance of everybody."

Fantasy distributor Sony Pictures is hoping to tap that synergy for the Final Fantasy video and DVD release, and Lee is taking time out from preproduction for his upcoming action film--Ecks vs. Sever, starring Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas--to help out. While the out production executive has shepherded previous star-studded block busters, including Jerry Maguire, My Best Friend's Wedding, and Philadelphia, Final Fantasy was an almost star-free change of pace, since its animators created hot CG (computer-generated) actors in leather to fight the alien undead, with human actors used only to provide the voices.

The DVD version of the movie adds on many new features to complement the aliens, ghosts, and individually animated hair follicles that wowed viewers (a few of them, anyway) at theaters. There's a new audio commentary track featuring Lee and the creators of the movie, some new CG scenes specifically created for the DVD, and even a feature that allows viewers to reedit a scene from the film. As with previous digitally created movies like A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, couch potatoes can also expect the digital-to-digital transfer to look crisper, clearer, and more straining on home video systems than it did in theaters.

It's a movie not just for Trekkies and video game enthusiasts, Lee says. He's not into video games, but he says he's "very interested in directors and visual stylists," which was why he decided to pick up the rights to the acclaimed Final Fantasy video game series when he was head of film production at Sony's Columbia TriStar.

While pundits fretted over whether the movie's photo-real CG characters somehow spelled the death of acting, nobody blinked when manly man Gray (voiced by Alec Baldwin) appeared shiftless on the cover of the gay magazine In, Los Angeles--just one of the bonuses of having digital actors is that they won't turn up their noses at a bit of adoring gay affection. We're still waiting, however, for Woody from Toy Story to pose shiftless for a gay rag.

Find more on Final Fantasy--the movie and the video game--at www.advocate.com

Lopez is an editor at IGN.com.