What can journalists do when there's a demand for stories about a film that almost no one has actually seen?

One solution is do stories that are supposedly about hype and hysteria - stories which will, in turn, be part of the hype and hysteria. The excesses of Star Wars fans make especially good copy. Good photographs too - like the shots of people packing the toy shops to buy all the new merchandise when it appeared earlier this month. For a long time the crowds of reporters covering the queue outside a Hollywood cinema outnumbered those actually in the queue. However, slowly but surely fanatics with plastic light sabres and Wookie masks turned up.

The Internet has made it easier, too, to follow the fans' fanaticism - and also to mock it (nerds, geeks etc). In fact, the makers of The Phantom Menace have deliberately used the Internet to fuel excitement about the film and make fans feel involved. Jim Ward, head of marketing at Lucasfilm, says the official site (www.starwars.com) was partly born out of an awareness that especially after the first three Star Wars films were re-released in 1997, a new generation of fans was created - one that happened to be very Web-savvy.

"Our site was really established as a way for us to communicate with our core fans. They've sustained us all these years, and we wanted to make sure there was one place they could go to get the official information as promptly as possible."

next week: Teen Movies - So you think Star Wars is kids' stuff? There are plenty of films starring and aimed at teenagers around, with more girl heroes than ever before