From Webs to Obi-Wan

Can a Spider-Man take a bite out of a Jedi knight?

The summer movie season kicked off Friday with the release of “Spider-Man” on about 7,500 screens, and with it begins a meticulously choreographed sprint to that most prized of Hollywood trophies: box-office bragging rights.

The Marvel comics superhero will be followed less than two weeks later with the opening of “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones,” and already the spinning has begun on which will have the bigger opening weekend.

Based on early tracking of the film, “Spider-Man” could take in as much as $80 million at the box office this weekend--a huge, though not record-breaking, opening. That would make Sony Pictures, which is distributing “Spider-Man,” king of the hill in Hollywood, at least until “Attack of the Clones” opens May 16. The film opens on a Thursday, giving its distributor, 20th Century Fox, an extra day to bolster weekend box-office numbers.

Though its place in the pop culture universe is firmly established, this latest “Star Wars” episode may have the greater marketing challenge, trying to overcome what some fans call its own bad reputation from 1999’s “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.” Bryan O’Donnell, a 26-year-old comic-book reader from Marina del Rey, said he plans to read all the reviews he can get his hands on for both films, but he will look at the “Star Wars” critiques a little more closely.

“I need assurance that that’s going to be good before I rush out and see it,” he said.

That has resulted in a change of strategy by Lucasfilm--which produces the “Star Wars” films--this time around. The company has been trying to better control the hoopla (for example, fewer licensees for “Clones”-related products) while getting the word out through key sources that “Clones” is a better film than “Phantom Menace.”

Internet movie guru Harry Knowles was leaked a copy of the movie, apparently by a Lucasfilm insider in March. He says he was smuggled into an Austin hotel room to see the completed film. Initially, Lucasfilm representatives said they would investigate where the leak came from, but after Knowles gave the film a glowing review, the matter was dropped.

“Before I saw the film, the buzz for ‘Star Wars’ was limp in a lot of ways. There was not a ‘gotta see it, gotta see it,’” said Knowles, the founder of the fan-friendly Ain’t It Cool News Web site. “You could definitely tell ... that there was a governed sense of trepidation in regards to the film. I remember being in theaters, and while the trailers [for “Attack of the Clones”] are beautiful and stunning, people were not letting themselves get excited. The ‘Spiderman’ [trailer] would get cheers and sort of an electric buzz in the audience, while ‘Star Wars’ was sort of muted.”

Jim Ward, vice president of marketing for Lucasfilm, noted: “We are more focused this time around. We have less tonnage--less promotional partners, and we are targeting the kid audience.”

The All-Important Opening Weekend

In today’s box-office-obsessed atmosphere, the opening weekend is crucial to a movie’s success. A movie--especially in the crowded summer season, when a potential blockbuster opens almost every weekend--must break out of the gate fast; it’s not unusual for big summer films to take in a third of their total box office in the opening weekend. For example, last summer “Planet of the Apes” took in 38% of its total final gross its opening weekend--$68.5 million out of a final total of $180 million, while “The Mummy Returns” brought in 33.8% its first weekend, $68.2 million out of a $202-million total, according to Paul Dergarabedian, head of Exhibitor Relations Co., which tracks box-office grosses for the studios. The domestic success of a movie often foreshadows its overseas performance. This summer features such “franchise films” as “Men in Black II” and “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”

Despite both studios’ denials that their films are in competition, “Spider-Man” and “Attack of the Clones” are kicking off the summer season by going after the same demographic: young teen fans of comic books and fantasy. Both films deal with characters who have become cultural phenomena. Consumers can already find “Spider-Man” and “Clones” games, fast-food tie-ins and toys such as a bungee-jumping Spider-Man and a voice-activated R2D2 robot.

“The same people who want to see ‘Spider-Man’ are the same ones who can’t wait to see ‘Attack of the Clones,’” said Dergarabedian. “Luckily for ‘Spider-Man,’ it will have two weeks without too much competition.”

With an increasingly savvy moviegoing public watching Hollywood’s bottom line, judging winners and losers in the box-office sweepstakes has become a popular pastime. Speculation has already begun on Web sites about which of the early summer action fantasy films will be the bigger hit, as in this comment posted on rottentomatoes.com: “The way I look at it ‘Spider-Man’ has two weeks to make back its budget--cause then it’s all ‘Clones’ till summer! Good luck Spidey--you’re gonna need it!!!!”

But “Spider-Man” has its loyalists too.

Bill Liebowitz, owner of Golden Apple Comics on Melrose Avenue in L.A., said, “There’s definitely a buzz for ‘Spider-Man.’” He knows of people who reserved seats for the opening show days before the movie’s release, and he has helped librarians stock the city’s bookshelves with graphic novels featuring the superhero.

The feeling, he said, is not the same for “Attack of the Clones.” After “Episode I,” Liebowitz said, “There certainly was a real feeling of disappointment and distrust. When you wait 10 years for something, and it’s the most important thing in your life, and then you come out with Jar Jar Binks, you tend to be disappointed,” he said, referring to the “Episode I” character that garnered heat for seeming to be a racist caricature. So, Liebowitz said, “There’s a little bit of selling to be done.”

Lucas Less Secretive With Episode II

Sony and Lucasfilm are having to walk the fine line of generating hype but not being caught short by the expectations they create. Even “Star Wars” director George Lucas and fans of the series have acknowledged “The Phantom Menace” was something of a disappointment to fans, even though it was a box-office smash ($431 million in domestic gross).

Lucas now is keenly aware of the disappointment “Phantom Menace” garnered among his fan base, as he told Time magazine in a recent cover story interview and movie preview (which included allowing a Time magazine writer to see an early print of the film). Guarding the product has been a characteristic of Lucas, whose studio handles not only the production of his films but also spearheads the marketing.

With “Phantom Menace,” the film was carefully kept under wraps until the release date. But with “Attack of the Clones,” reviews of the film may start appearing more than a week before its release. In a highly unusual move, a publicist representing Fox in Chicago sent out an e-mail to all print media saying that “in a perfect world Lucasfilm would love for opening-day reviews to wait as we know this will never happen. Therefore I’m passing the OK to run them starting the 8th.”

Ward said Lucasfilm had no knowledge of this e-mail and had not been advised about it. Fox later said the e-mail was a mistake and the film should be reviewed on its opening day, May 16. (Newspapers generally honor studio embargoes against reviewing a film before it is released. Because “Attack of the Clones” has already been reviewed on a Web site and Time ran a partial review, it’s not clear when papers will run reviews of the film.)

The “Spider-Man” campaign also has been carefully orchestrated. One tactic: a double-edged approach introducing Spider-Man to a new audience while sparking an older generation’s memories of the reluctant hero. Its marketing posters have been so well received they have been stolen from locations around L.A.

“They are now collectors’ items,” said Jack Feuer, who has written about the topic as national news editor for Adweek.

Sony and Lucasfilm seem to have learned some valuable lessons from earlier overhyped campaigns like Disney’s “Pearl Harbor” and Sony’s “Godzilla.”

“The industry--especially for those who are mounting major tent-pole franchise movies--is being terribly cautious and not over-promising,” said Ken Markman, head of KKM Enterprises, a Los Angeles-based strategic marketing consulting firm to the entertainment industry. “In the consumer marketplace there was too much product shipped at the wrong time, with very little retail being sold with the last generation of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Godzilla.’ ‘Godzilla’ is an archetypal example of what the industry wants to avoid--over-expectation and under-delivery.”

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Times staff writers Lynn Smith and Sufiya Abdur-Rahman and freelance writer Richard Natale contributed to this story.