Tobey Maguire

Los Angeles, Dec. 12 (Reuters): Where is the first place movie fans will see the new Spider-Man 2 spinning its crime-fighting web? The web, of course.

Columbia Pictures, the movie studio behind the top-grossing film of 2002, yesterday said the worldwide debut of the upcoming movie’s promotional trailer will be on Internet service Yahoo! on December 15.

The trailer — an industry term used to describe the brief scene clips of upcoming movies preceding a film in theatres — can be seen in 13 countries on the Internet in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. In recent years, the Internet has become a major marketing tool for Hollywood’s studios because so many movie fans surf the Net for the latest in movie news.

In many cases, like the Lord of the Rings movies or independent hit The Blair Witch Project, web promotion has been a huge boost for a movie’s box office. However, for some films, like last summer’s The Hulk, negative buzz on the Net has hurt a movie.

Spider-Man, which starred Tobey Maguire as the emotionally conflicted crime-buster, sold a record $114-million worth of tickets in its debut weekend in May 2002 and grossed $820 million at global box offices, according to Columbia Pictures.

Spider-Man 2 is set to hit the theatres in 2004. In it, Maguire returns as Peter Parker, who sheds his cloak as a college student by day to don the red-and-blue suit of Spider-Man. It brings in a new nemesis, Otto Octavius, portrayed by Alfred Molina.