What a Web They Spin

Sen. Kelly’s campaign Web site looks remarkably like a hate site. On it, the senator warns that our country is being overrun by a “growing number of individuals--who are impure at their most basic level.” He promotes “a brighter, genetically cleaner United States of America.” And 13-year-olds everywhere are eating his message up.

Before you write your congressman, you should know that Sen. Kelly is actually a fictional character in “X-Men,” and his Web site, https://www.mutantwatch.com, was erected to promote the widely anticipated summer release from 20th Century Fox. The “Mutant Watch 2000” site lets users participate in the mutant hysteria that is part of the sci-fi comic-book film adaptation’s story line.

Having learned important lessons from last summer’s blockbuster indie film “The Blair Witch Project,” which generated a groundswell of buzz online, the major studios are ratcheting up their Web sites for this summer’s crop of blockbusters. The official sites for “X-Men,” “M:I-2” and “The Perfect Storm,” among others, offer rich multimedia, movie-related content and interactive features designed to build and sustain excitement right up until the opening day at the box office.

When it comes to using the Web, studios may not lead the way, but they’re proving to be fast learners.

“ ‘Blair Witch’ wasn’t exactly a wake-up call, but it . . . confirmed the importance of the Internet,” said Jeffrey Godsick, vice president of publicity and promotions at Fox. “The Internet allows us to identify a niche audience and tap into their loyalty in an efficient way. Studios can’t feed the general moviegoer at the same level.”

In marketing their summer films on the Web, studios followed the pattern established by Artisan Entertainment last year with “Blair Witch”: incrementally introducing back story and depth to a movie’s Web site to build momentum leading up to the release. Using a movie site simply to post promotional material and trailers won’t get the job done, the studios have discovered.

Chris Gore, who runs the independent FilmThreat.com movie site, said, “The studios are now directly feeding the hard-core fans, speaking directly to them, and treating them with some kind of respect. They’re reaching the people who are fanatics, who then go out and influence all their friends.”

Fox employed a two-pronged strategy to present “X-Men” online, commencing six months before the opening of the film. In January, the studio launched the “Mutant Watch” site, allowing visitors to identify friends and family members whom they suspect could be mutants and assess their own mutant quotient by answering a series of questions. As the story line continues to unfold online over the next few weeks, users will be able to role-play by combining their mutated genes (or “superpowers”) with those of other users in order to unlock more information on the site.

The studio also posted a straightforward promotional site, https://www.x-menthemovie.com, featuring QuickTime trailers, transcripts and streaming video from chats with the film’s stars, in addition to material, such as photos and production notes, from the movie. The site’s reach has been extensive: The second trailer, posted April 5, has generated more than 1.3 million downloads, Godsick said, and more than 100,000 mutants have been registered on the “Mutant Watch” site.

Over at the “M:I-2” site, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assume the identity of an Impossible Mission Force agent. On the elaborate high-tech site, located at https://www.missionimpossible.com, participants are issued an alphanumeric code name and a physical identity, which they can modify, for example, by adding a mustache or changing gender. The agents can then hone their espionage skills by playing a series of eight Shockwave games of increasing intensity that test such essential spy tactics as safecracking, decoding, bomb defusing and helicopter navigation.

The site, which is available in nine languages, also provides an Agent Locator (a map graphic that shows how many users are registered as agents all over the world) and a communication function that lets visitors send e-mail messages to other agents.

Other features on the site include downloadable “M:I-2” desktop images and Mission Time screen savers, which synchronize a user’s computer with Global Mission Time (Greenwich Mean Time), as well the trailers and background information on the movie. A teaser site launched in November, and the enhanced site started in February, giving the movie seven months to ramp up online before its May 24 release date, said Kaaren Shalom, executive director of interactive marketing for Paramount Pictures.

Another fully fleshed site is https://www.perfectstorm.com, the official site for “The Perfect Storm,” a Warner Bros. film based on the true story of a deadly storm that hit Gloucester, Mass., in October 1991. The most graphic component on the site is an animated 100-foot wave that lets visitors measure the size of a man compared to the size of the Andrea Gail (the fishing boat at the center of the film) to the enormous wave that crushed it.

The site effectively deals with the real-life tragedy depicted in the movie (based on the best-selling book of the same name) by providing an enormous amount of interactive information, including the real satellite images from the storm, amateur video of the storm, and history and links related to Gloucester. More is planned for the site before the June 30 release of the movie, including a 13-minute documentary produced by the Web team that spotlights the people of Gloucester who survived the storm, as well as video dispatches from the movie’s Andrea Gail, which is making its way from Long Beach to Gloucester and continuing on to Hamburg, Germany, to celebrate the German premiere of the film.

And taking advantage of the media synergy provided by Time Warner’s pending merger with AOL, “The Perfect Storm” has secured prime positioning on AOL’s front page, which has the potential to reach 22 million subscribers.

“We intend to make this a competitive advantage,” said Brad Ball, president of domestic theatrical marketing for Warner Bros. Pictures. “Our Web site, combined with our massive presence on AOL, provides a great opportunity to be synergistic. The Internet is the only medium that has the practicality of daily updating and keeping the pitch fresh.”

Common to all three studios is an aggressive investment in their Web sites. Although executives would not release exact figures spent marketing their movies online, typical budgets for studio movie sites, according to industry sources, range from $20,000 to $150,000--a pittance when it comes to the overall marketing costs that average about $20 million for a film. Arthur Cohen, president of marketing for Paramount Pictures, put the cost of the “M:I-2” site at “less than the price of a TV announcement.”

Executives at Artisan are hesitant to take credit for the studios’ current approach to the Internet.

“Ultimately, we had the content that intrigued users,” said Amorette Jones, executive vice president of worldwide theatrical marketing for Artisan. “People got into the back story, the journals, and became invested in the film.”

Will the other studios’ campaigns work as well as Artisan’s? That remains to be seen.

“When we do our research about how people hear about movies, the Web is beginning to show up, but it continues to be near the bottom compared to TV, movie trailers and newspapers,” said Warner Bros.’ Ball. “We’re still trying to connect the interaction of the Web to ticket purchase.”

At Fox, Godsick said, “it’s a little too early to tell” about the impact of the Web campaign. “We’ll know how effective it’s been on opening day. But we do know we have an engaged audience that we haven’t had before on such a long-term basis, certainly not six or seven months before release.”

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Web Buzz

Besides “Perfect Storm,” “M:I-2” and “X-Men,” which summer films are getting talked up the most on the Internet? The list includes:

* “Chicken Run,” DreamWorks’ pairing with Aardman Animation from England; it’s the “Great Escape,” only with . . . chickens.

* “Shanghai Noon,” a martial arts comedy from Disney, starring Jackie Chan.

* “Titan A.E.,” Fox’s animated adventure aimed at teenage boys.

* “Road Trip,” DreamWorks’ raunchy comedy starring Tom Green, an idol of the Internet set.

* “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps,” a sequel to the hit comedy from Universal with Eddie Murphy reprising the gastrointestinally challenged family.