AMD said Friday that Troublemaker Studios, the film production company behind the just-released "Predators" movie, used its technology to generate the special effects and animations. More specifically, the studio used six-core AMD Opteron processors and ATI FirePro GPUs to get the job done.
Troublemaker was founded (and owned) by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and producer Elizabeth Avellan in 1991. It's special effects division--Troublemaker Digital--generally uses AMD products for a good deal of its projects.
"With a long history in the movie making industry, Troublemaker Studios is using AMD technology to push the envelope of digital moving making and special effects in several blockbuster films," AMD said in a press release. "In addition to 'Predators', Rodriguez has looked to AMD technology to create six of his movies, including 'Shorts', 'Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams', 'Spy Kids 3D: Game Over', 'Planet Terror', and 'Sin City'."
AMD said that Rodriguez plans to "deploy" AMD technology as the digital hardware backbone for his next movie currently in production, "Machete." The movie is expected to hit theaters on September 3, 2010.
Unfortunately, hardware specifics--such as the actual setup of the rigs used at Troublemaker--wasn't provided. Still, it's interesting to know what's powering the visual candy we see at the movies.
Predators is slated to hit theaters Friday, July 9 (today), and is said to be to "Predator" what "Aliens" is to "Alien". We'll see.