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American Morning
'The Fast and the Furious' Tops Box Office; Riding the Internet Movie Promotion Wave
Aired June 25, 2001 - 10:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL TUSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, my friends. I am Bill Tush reporting from New York.
In movie theaters this weekend, audiences had a need for speed.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): "The Fast and the Furious" drove a minor frenzy at the box office this weekend. The fuel-injected flick crossed the finish line far ahead of the competition with an estimated ticket sales of $41.6 million.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "DR. DOLITTLE 2")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Dr. Dolittle, I presume.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TUSH: The debut of newest "Dr. Dolittle" did more than a little business in theaters. "Dr. Dolittle 2," starring Eddie Murphy and a menagerie of comic animals, collected an estimated $26.7 million for second place.
Last week's champ, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," slipped to No. 3 with $20.2 million.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "ATLANTIS")
MICHAEL J. FOX, ACTOR: Just follow my lead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TUSH: Two cartoons rounded out the top five. Disney's "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" landed in fourth with an estimated $13.2 million. And that animated ogre "Shrek" stepped into fifth place, earning another $11 million this weekend.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TUSH: And I'm Casey Kasem.
Next weekend, that director that gave us "E.T." brings us "A.I." Anticipation for Steven Spielberg's Kubrick-inspired flick has been building with the help of a massive marketing effort focused on the Web.
And as CNN's Sherri Sylvester tells us, "A.I." is just one of the summer blockbusters launching all-out cyberspace campaigns.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHERRI SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two summers after "The Blair Witch" cast a spell on Web surfers, the studios have seized the spirit of Internet movie marketing.
Nearly ever major summer movie is generating online buzz with sites that go far beyond the old-fashioned trailer-watching.
AARON SCHATZ, LYCOS.COM: You have to turn it into a must-see movie. If you've been playing the "A.I." game for three months, when "A.I." comes out, you're going.
SYLVESTER: The "A.I." game began when the film's posters and trailer revealed this credit. Watch closely. Jeanine Salla, sentient machine therapist, sent surfers searching under her name for clues to the Spielberg film.
BRANDON GRAY, ZAP2IT.COM: And actually what sprung up was all these sites for Dr. Jeanine Salla, and she is -- apparently she's part of this fictional university called Bangalore University, and there are all these links, it's like -- it's is a labyrinth of sites.
SYLVESTER: We went searching for signs of intelligent life with Brandon Gray from Zap2it.com.
GRAY: If you go to Google.com, which is a search engine, and if you type in "Jeanine Salla," you'll be taken to a number of sites. I believe this is the group that's trying to liberate the robots or the artificial intelligence, so that they have the same rights as human beings.
This is the Coalition for Robotic Freedom, is the name. You'll find links to the actual fan sites that are trying to figure this whole thing out. Like, here's this Yahoo! club about the Jeanine Salla conspiracy.
SYLVESTER: "Planet of the Apes" has gone into cyberspace with a real-life scavenger hunt. Click on "Project Ape" to find coordinates to use with a global positioning satellite. Props from the film and other prizes can be found around the world.
GRAY: Mission number four: Southern Bowl. It's hidden somewhere in South America.
SYLVESTER: No one knows who is playing this game, or another, operation "Swordfish." Here, cracking the code requires watching the film's final credits. For the studios, it's cheap cross-promotion.
SCHATZ: They've managed to create this whole online world, and people go to these Web sites and have started all of this buzz and interest around the movie without having to purchase extra commercials, extra TV time, extra trailer time.
SYLVESTER: But is it all just an elaborate tease? The "A.I." searchers called cloudmakers say watch for the eyes to spot a web of deceit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will pop up right here. See that? You get two little blue eyes, the "A.I." eyes of Haley Joel Osment.
SYLVESTER: So we asked Osment about Jeanine Salla.
HALEY JOEL OSMENT, ACTOR: I actually didn't have that much work with her because she's postproduction.
SYLVESTER: Maybe a case of artificial intelligence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TUSH: For more on how the big summer movies did this weekend, catch our next "Showbiz Today Reports" in the 11:00 hour. I'll be here with our box office analyst, the always jolly Marty Grove. I'll see you then.
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