Who killed Evan Chan?

Over 15 years on, the marketing campaign for Steven Spielberg’s A.I.

When it came to Steven Spielbergs 2001 sci-fi film,A.I.

Artificial Intelligence,Jeanine Salla played a low-profile yet important role.

The only thing was, Jeanine Salla never existed.

Before the spring of 2001, almost nothing had been seen of Spielbergs latest sci-fi movie.

According to this 2001 piece fromEntertainment Weekly,actors were only given incomplete chunks of the script.

Salla, meanwhile, suspects foul play.

What if nobody even noticed Jeanine Sallas name on the advertising material?

The web of 2001 had yet to be transformed by social media.

Everything changed when the canny minds in charge of the campaign got Harry Knowles involved.

In April, Knowles got an anonymous email recommending he do a search for Sallas name.

ThisAintitcoolpost, from April 12th, shows how quickly film fans got involved with the Beast mystery.

Once upon a time there was a forest, that teemed with life, love, sex and violence.

Things that humans did naturally.

And their robots copied flawlessly.

This forest is vast and surprising.

It can be a frightening forest, and some of its paths are dark, and difficult.

I was lost there once a long time ago.

Now I make a run at help others who have gone astray.

If you ever feel lost, my child, write me at thevisionary.net.

One publicity stunt even involved the staging of anti-robot demonstrations in American cities, including New York and Chicago.

This site alone contains pages of information about the fictional entitys research into cybernetics.

The story itself was written by sci-fi and fantasy author Sean Stewart.

How many people had actually got to the bottom of Evan Chans murder?

Of those, how many were enticed to actually leave their office chairs and seeA.I.in their local cinema?

That The Beast became so popular was, Lee said, Absolute luck.

As far as Lees aware, nobody discovered what the word was.

Yeah, no one ever saw it, Lee said.

We had such high hopes.

You know, I say whispering is more powerful than shouting.

Well, sometimes its too quiet of a whisper.

AGamasutraarticle from 2005 reports that over a million people played The Beast.

We knew it was experimental, Kennedy toldUSA Today.I believed in these guys and Isobelieved in the concept.

As originally envisioned, The Beast would have served as the first phase in an even larger experience.

In total, there were three tie-in gamesplanned, calledA.I: The Circuit,A.I: Guardian, andA.I.

Chaser all three were ultimately cancelled, perhaps because of the movies disappointing performance.

Judging by the handful of screenshots left from their production, the world didnt miss too much.

Fittingly, one of the few surviving pages is afake obituary.

Its for Jeanine Salla, who died at the age of 77 in New York.

Oh, and as for Evan Chans killer?