Mysterious faxes and passwords. Access codes buried in Web sites that send over even more links. They must have spent millions on this. And they are really hooking people. It is so clever it's insidious.
People are positively addicted to it.
Spielberg has kept his mouth shut about the Net campaign, too. But on the Internet, the Web-generated marketing ploy has become a huge virtual scavenger hunt, with discussion boards buzzing on movie fan sites as Net users share their latest clues to unlocking parts of the plot. The movie, based on an idea the late Stanley Kubrick shared with Spielberg, is set in the mid-21st Century, when humans have invented robots that are aware of their own existence, thus possessing artificial intelligence. It opens June 29. The hype began in late March when someone watched the trailer on the movie's official Web site.