And, of course, there are plenty of opportunities to buy things. Lucasfilm's highly polished, professional effort notwithstanding, you can also have a lot of fun on fan Web sites, many with impressive graphics, video and other features. But that hasn't stopped fans from trying to find out everything they can. On the movie lines, some of the fans turned up as early as the beginning of April to be among the first to catch the new flick. The fans at Hollywood's Chinese Theatre, New York's Ziegfeld and San Francisco's Coronet Theater are also raising money for the Starlight Children's Foundation, a charity that helps children in hospitals.
Web surfers can do more than watch the fans lined up in Hollywood.
Asked to prove the phone number was genuine, Sprague told a caller to look for a burly man in a black T-shirt in the Web cam picture. The burly man and his black shirt appeared a few seconds later.