Did you miss an opportuntiy to record the Trailer? If so, we have good news. We've been informed by a representative from "The Howie Mandel Show" that they will air the trailer on December 1st. Check your local listings.

From Reuters...

Preview of new Star Wars movie hot ticket

The hottest ticket in Hollywood these days is for a two-minute preview of a Star Wars film that will not be released until next May.

If the hoopla surrounding the preview to the latest Star Wars film is an indication of how the movie will fare, then box office results to Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace, could be out of this world.

The movie is the first new Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi in 1983 and is a prequel to the events recounted in the original trilogy created by George Lucas.

The trailer to Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace, debuted at theatres nationwide Friday. But die-hard fans first rushed to get a glimpse last Tuesday in a few Los Angeles theatres that offered a sneak preview of the trailer.

""I couldn't believe it!'' said one Los Angeles aspiring screenwriter who was in one of the theatres on Tuesday.

""Hordes of Star Wars fans just left after the trailer was finished -- after they paid the $8 admission for the main movie that was playing,'' he said.

Phantom stars Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor. Twentieth Century Fox is distributing the Lucasfilm production.

The new film is the first of three planned Star Wars prequels that recount the story of how Anakin Skywalker became the villain Darth Vader.

The trailer has an opening title declaring, ""Every Generation Has a Legend'' and according to the Los Angeles Times one theatre that showed it early last week had an 85 percent jump in business.

From today's L.A. Times...

Hitting Star Wars Site at Warp Speed

By P.J. Huffstutter

Since LucasFilm Ltd. unveiled the movie trailer for the first Star Wars prequel last week, its official Web site for Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (http://www.starwars.com/episode-i) has been flooded with people trying to download a copy.

The traffic has been so intense--as many as 400 hits a second--that the studio's Internet service provider has had to expand the company's pipe from 70 to nearly 81 T-1 lines, LucasFilm officials said.

"As of Friday morning, we've had about 400,000 people get a copy of the trailer from our site," said Marc Hedlund, director of Internet development for LucasFilm. "We knew it was going to be popular, but I'm still surprised at the reaction."

But copies of the two-minute clip are circulating all over the World Wide Web, both official and bootleg versions taken by people who sneaked cameras into theaters. Many of these clips are housed at fan sites such as TheForce.Net (http://www.TheForce.net) or Dark Horizons (http://www.darkhorizons.com), where thousands of people gather to speculate about plot lines and swap insider gossip.

From Newsweek ...

The Second Coming: Fans flock to theaters to see the new Star Wars trailer--and split before Meet Joe Black

By Kendall Hamilton, with Devin Gordon and Alisha Davis

Never doubt the force. in Star Wars legend, the energy field created by all living things helped Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star and ultimately bring the Empire to its knees. Last week on Earth, it induced thousands of people to fork over nine bucks for a peek at two minutes of film.

Make that two incredibly anticipated minutes of film. The first trailer for Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace debuted last Tuesday at 75 theaters across the country, to the delight of Star Wars fans who've waited 15 years for a look at the next installment in George Lucas's space saga. (The film itself, which is to be the first of three slated Star Wars prequels, doesn't premiere until May 21.) At New York's Ziegfeld Theater, where the trailer ran both before and after the day's showings of Meet Joe Black, fans greeted the footage with cheers and applause. About a third of the 500-person audience opted not to make Joe Black's acquaintance but walked out, buzzing excitedly, after the preview faded. Some planned to play videogames in the lobby, then return to their seats for the postshow screening. Others were content just to mill about on the sidewalk. "That was the best $9 I've ever spent," said Paul Sullivan, 26. "I was 5 when the first one came out, and I still haven't gotten over it."

Similar scenes played out at theaters across the country. Box-office receipts for the three films that carried the Star Wars trailer spiked as much as 25 percent on Tuesday, says Paul Dergarabedian of Exhibitor Relations, which tracks box-office grosses. It's hard to know how much of that increase was due to the trailer, "but it had to have had a substantial effect," he says. The teaser went into wide release last weekend, but for those who couldn't wait, a bootlegged version, with fans cheering in the background, found its way onto the Internet Tuesday night. Lucasfilm responded by posting the trailer itself, attracting 200,000 viewers in 48 hours. "I slept great that night," says Tom Sherak, chairman of Twentieth Century Fox's Domestic Film Group, which will distribute "Episode I."

It's tough to judge a film by its trailer, but the footage released last week suggests that Lucas is set to give Star Wars fans what they want. In a lightning-fast montage set to John Williams's famous score, we see intergalactic dogfights. We see cool new aliens and old favorites like Yoda. We see Samuel L. Jackson as a Jedi knight, and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And we see the faint glimmerings of a plot centering on Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), a boy who will train as a Jedi (and eventually become Darth Vader). Natalie Portman plays the young queen who will one day wed Anakin, and Liam Neeson stars as a Jedi. Various fan-run Web sites are bursting with other plot nuggets--some perhaps accurate, some spurious. Lucasfilm won't confirm or deny any of them. "It's not so much about secrecy as it is about saving up some of the big surprises," says spokeswoman Lynne Hale.

There do seem to be two schools of thought among the Star Wars devoted. Some are shunning the rumor-trafficking, preferring to savor the unveiling at its appointed time, like a gift on Christmas morning. Others want to get right under the tree and rattle the box. But all agree that the series's return is a milestone, particularly for Gen-Xers, many of whom can recall their first Star Wars screening with the same precision boomers reserve for the Kennedy assassination. "I'm excited to see the film. I just hope it doesn't suck," said New York University film student Edward Hill after seeing the trailer. "I can't imagine what it must be like to make a film with the hopes and dreams of an entire generation in your grasp. May the Force be with George." It hasn't let him down yet.

From the BBC ...

The Net feels the Force

Congested: Fans will be lucky to dowload the trailer this week

The release of the trailer for the first of the Star Wars prequels is attracting huge attention on the Internet

The BBC's Lizo Mzima witnesses the rush to see just a few minutes of the new Star Wars

The launch on the film's official website of the "rushes" for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace has created on-line congestion not witnessed since the publication of the Starr Report.

Director George Lucas's Star Wars (episode IV) and its two sequels (episodes V and VI) are the most successful films yet made, but the buzz created by the launch of a mere trailer is such that episodes I, II and III look set to shatter all established records.

Now fans around the world are besieging the only place outside North America where the two minutes 20 second trailer can be seen - at http://www.starwars.com.

At the 75 selected cinemas in the US and Canada where it is being shown, many thousands of people have had to queue around the block several times to pay $10 just for a glimpse of the next of Mr Lucas's offerings.

Unprecedented levels of security have surrounded the making of the three prequels, creating a "feeding frenzy" every time information is released to the public, usually through the films' official website.

Starwars.com offers a free download of the trailer in Real Video, Quicktime and avi formats, although it recommends a cinema viewing for "top-quality audio and visual presentation quality" including THX sound.

The young Darth Vader, as seen in the trailerBut appearances can be deceptive. The trailer's Editor Mark Mrnka says in the website introduction: "It may look like this trailer gives away a lot, but it's only scratching the surface."

Episode One, which features stars such as Samuel L Jackson and Ewan McGregor, tells the story of the young Anakin Skywalker at the start of his journey to becoming arch-villain Darth Vader.

Fans' dedication to the Star Wars films is such that one report describes two thirds of the 500-strong audience for Denzel Washington's The Siege at a Los Angeles cinema walking out after the trailer had finished.

Film distributors have sought to encourage cinema-goers to stay by repeating the trailer at the end of films as well.

If you have Real Video, check out this report from New York that accompanied the article.