The clamor inside movie theaters was only one facet of this three-dimensional campaign.
For real gamers, the true hardcore battlefield was still the arcades—dimly lit spaces where the air was thick with sweat and electronic sound effects.
"You want me to hang this? Are you people crazy?"
The owner of a Chicago arcade, a man nicknamed "Fat Joe," pinched a Hook movie poster between his fingers, his face full of reluctance.
Pointing at posters for Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat on the wall, he growled at Sega's channel representative, "My customers come here to play games. If they see a movie poster and run off to watch a movie, how am I supposed to stay in business?"
The channel rep from Columbia TriStar Pictures merely smiled. He opened his briefcase, took out several crisp bills bearing Benjamin Franklin's portrait, and gently set them on the counter.
"A small token from Columbia TriStar, Joe. You only need to hang it up for a few days."
Fat Joe stared at the green bills, his Adam's apple bobbing.
The fat on his face twitched, and in the end he grudgingly grabbed the cash and the poster.
"Fine, fine! For the money!" he snapped. "But if it hurts my business, I'm tearing it down and using it as toilet paper!"
Yet things quickly went in a direction he hadn't expected.
Some regulars, after playing a few rounds of the newly arrived Hook, were drawn in by the flashy visuals and smooth action. To his surprise, they actually began discussing whether to go see the movie after work.
"Hey, this game's pretty good. The movie can't be that bad, right?"
"Let's go. We've got nothing better to do."
Watching their backs as they left, Fat Joe cursed under his breath, convinced the poster really was driving customers away.
But not long after, the bell over the door jingled.
A young couple walked in, followed by a family of three. They passed straight through rows of fighting and shooting cabinets and headed directly for the Hook machine.
"This is it! This is the one they were crowding around at the theater!" the little boy shouted excitedly, pointing at the cabinet.
His father fished a few coins out of his pocket and handed them over.
Fat Joe froze.
He didn't recognize a single one of them. They clearly weren't regulars.
"Boss, got any open spots?" a young man asked, fresh from the movie theater down the street. "We couldn't get in line over there. Heard you've got the game too?"
Fat Joe's head buzzed—and suddenly it all clicked.
He looked at these unfamiliar faces who had come specifically because they couldn't play at the theater, then at the movie poster he'd despised so much. The fat on his face spread into a grin like a blooming chrysanthemum.
This wasn't driving customers away at all.
This was two-way traffic.
"We do! Of course we do!" he said enthusiastically, personally helping them change money into tokens, his attitude completely transformed.
That night, during closing tally, Fat Joe stared at the Hook machine's coin box, packed to the brim, his grin stretching almost to his ears.
He felt not the slightest resistance anymore about hanging movie posters.
The same scene was playing out simultaneously in thousands of Sega-partnered arcades across the United States.
At Sega of America headquarters, the atmosphere was as lively as a party.
A report compiled by Columbia TriStar's market research department was being passed eagerly from executive to executive.
"Tom, great news!" Bernard Stolar slapped Kalinske hard on the shoulder, shouting with excitement. "The first-day numbers are in. We ran random exit surveys at theaters—do you know how many people decided to see the movie because of the game?"
He held up two fingers, then quickly folded one down.
"Even the most conservative estimate is ten percent! In some optimistic regions, it's close to twenty percent!"
A collective gasp rippled through the office.
For a Hollywood A-list production, one to two tenths of the opening-day box office coming purely from game-driven traffic was an astonishing figure.
The profits represented by that number were enough to drive any studio executive mad.
While the effect would inevitably diminish over time, strong early numbers had a massive impact on total box office.
"That's not all," another marketing analyst added. "We can't accurately count how many people were driven from theaters to arcades, but here's an interesting data point. On opening day, every Hook arcade machine installed in theaters had its coin box fill up and be unlocked and emptied at least three times on average."
Three times.
That meant the machines were swallowing coins nonstop from the moment business started, until their cash boxes were completely full.
Kalinske leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, unable to hide his satisfaction.
Elsewhere, inside Sony Columbia Pictures' headquarters, the atmosphere was just as electric.
Executives passed around several different reports—one with box office figures from Columbia TriStar's distribution arm, another with market feedback from Sega.
"The critics aren't being very kind," one vice president said, skimming a document and reading aloud. "Rotten Tomatoes is at just twenty-nine percent. They say the pacing drags, that the Neverland sections feel childish and lack magic."
The room fell silent for a split second—then burst into laughter.
"Childish? Lacking magic?" another executive scoffed, spreading his hands dramatically. "What did they watch last time, Citizen Kane? Do they even understand family entertainment?"
He picked up another report and slapped it on the table. "The audience score is seventy-six percent! That's what really counts! And look at this!"
He jabbed excitedly at a line in the report—cross-promotion analysis provided by Sega.
"More than ten percent of opening-day ticket buyers decided to see the movie after playing that damn arcade game in the theater! Ten percent! Tom Kalinske's people are geniuses!"
"We sent arcade machines to the theaters, and the arcades sent audiences right back to our screens. My God, making money doesn't get any easier than this."
Everyone was thrilled by the impressive box office numbers and the perfectly closed commercial loop.
As for the critics' sour remarks—who cared?
From the very start, this film had never been meant to chase Oscars.
Amid the celebration, only one person seemed out of place.
Director Steven Spielberg sat alone on a sofa in the corner, several newspapers with negative reviews scattered on the coffee table in front of him.
He wasn't looking at the impressive box office figures at all—only at words like "self-indulgent" and "all style, no substance" printed in the papers, his brow deeply furrowed.
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