Yow! This concert’s got game

Serious video-game players, used to pumping the games’ music through their sophisticated home sound systems, have stormed the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office for a concert May 10.

That’s when Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale in “Dear Friends -- Music From Final Fantasy,” the U.S. premiere of a two-hour score by Nobuo Uematsu using melodies he created for the popular “Final Fantasy” games. Scenes from the games will be projected on screens brought in by Square Enix, the company that produces them.

Tickets for the event sold out in three days. At press time, however, a pair in the front row was still being offered on EBay for $1,600.

The specifics of the program are a well-kept secret, but the music probably will draw on the first nine game soundtracks (Uematsu has left the most recent games largely to other composers).

Many people feel it was the omission of Uematsu’s music -- along with the absence of the familiar game characters and setting -- that led to the box-office disaster of Sony Pictures’ 2001 “Final Fantasy” movie. That film cost about $140 million but grossed just more than $33 million in North America, not even enough to cover the marketing costs.

Behind-the-scenes buzz, incidentally, is that the Philharmonic was a bit reluctant to take on the May project, even though Uematsu enjoys rock-star celebrity in his native Japan and video-game sales top $11 billion in the U.S., outpacing even the sale of movie tickets. It’s not likely the orchestra will balk at the idea of a second “Final Fantasy” concert, however.

-- Chris Pasles