After much hoopla and media blitzing, Alliance Communications’ $32 million feature Johnny Mnemonic hit the screens in Canada and in the u.s. May 26. Box office numbers for the first five days were $1.1 million in Canada and us$7 million stateside. It’s a wide release of about 180 prints in Canada. TriStar is releasing the cyberfilm in the u.s.

Anna Maria Muccilli, vp of publicity and promotion at Alliance, says long-term projections for box office performance are not available, but to date, the film is on target. ‘It’s too early to tell,’ she says of the film’s overall run, ‘but by the end of the week we should hit $1.3 million in Canada, which is right on target for the first week.’

Mary Pat Gleeson, vp of marketing, says the Johnny release is ‘incomparable’ to any other picture. It fits neither the American model, the foreign model, nor any other Canadian release. She estimates the media campaign at about $700,000.

Gleeson says Blackrobe, which had a media campaign of about $500,000 five years ago, compares somewhat in terms of the campaign budget, but there were far fewer prints released. Also, the target for Johnny is much wider, encompassing the 18-34-year-old market and skewed toward males and new-media keeners.

In addition to traditional marketing, Alliance Releasing is also exploring marketing the picture on the Internet. The first 12 days of the Johnny site brought in over 10,500 visitors. Alliance launched a nation-wide contest to win tickets to preview screenings of the film on the Web site, and is now using the address to give away prizes such as the cd-rom video game, autographed copies of the screenplay, t-shirts and mouse pads. The plan is to run the campaign as long as the film is in the theaters.

Johnny Mnemonic is the biggest-budget feature Alliance has produced to date.

The film is up against the likes of Diehard With a Vengeance and Crimson Tide, but Gleeson says, ‘We just have to be more creative to make the most of (the budget) we have.’

Johnny Mnemonic has been playing in Japan since mid-April, and for the week ending May 19, the film had done us$7.5 million in box office on 17 screens.