`JOHNNY MNEMONIC' TURNS CYBERFEARS INTO CYBERMARKETING

Never mind Virginia Woolf. Who's afraid of the Internet? Hollywood is-at least this summer. By the end of August, no fewer than four films dealing with cyberspace will visit a theater near you. And all of them take a suspicious view of the Internet and the new-media future in general, from the foreboding technonoir of TriStar Pictures' "Johnny Mnemonic," which arrived on May 26, to Columbia Pictures' Big Brotheristic hacker thriller "The Net" and Paramount Pictures' "Virtuosity," both scheduled to bow on August 4. It's fitting, then, that each of these films will be promoted via the very technologies that they approach with such cynicism. "We're always fearful of the `Big Brother' capabilities of technology, the dehumanizing aspects. It's a function of the artist to see into the future and look for the shadow side," said John Wiedeman, managing director of Propaganda Code, which produced the "Johnny Mnemonic" CD-ROM for Sony Imagesoft. "And besides, it just makes for great drama." "Johnny Mnemonic," based on a William Gibson short story, made for a great exercise in synergy among all of Sony's various units and divisions, from TriStar to Sony Music Entertainment, Sony New Technologies and Sony Imagesoft. Ads for the film include tags for the Internet site and CD-ROM; ads for the CD-ROM return the favor. Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York, created all the ads. Visitors to Sony's Internet site (http://www.sony.com) this month will be able to click over to an adjunct "Johnny" site and sample soundtrack cuts, download scenes from the movie and get information about the CD-ROM. Visitors can also take part in "Nethunt," in which participants must answer questions by visiting other Web sites. "We wanted to be true to Gibson's vision as we could in everything we did," said Steven Yee, director of marketing for Sony New Technologies. "The film, the CD-ROM and the Internet game all amount to three different views of the Internet and Gibson's short story." For the CD-ROM, Propaganda took Mr. Gibson's short story and screenplay and drafted its own script. "This isn't a repurposing of film images and making a game out of it," said Mr. Wiedeman. What that means: "Johnny" the CD-ROM has no interface and is 100% digitized video. "Johnny" the CD-ROM, in fact, isn't so much a game as a digital choose-your-own-adventure story. Mr. Yee said Sony will undertake another ambitious Internet promotion for Columbia's "The Net" in August, but a CD-ROM is not in the works. Paramount's "Virtuosity" will get Internet support and its own CD-ROM.M

`JOHNNY MNEMONIC' TURNS CYBERFEARS INTO CYBERMARKETING

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