Few films come with as big names or expectations as nextsummer's The War Of The Worlds.Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise and based on H.G. Wellsscience fiction classic, which already spawned a popular cult film version in1953, getting early teaser images and trailers right for the 2005 version wasvital.

American audiences had a chance to judge the result intheatres on Friday (Dec 10), the day the English-language trailer also appearedonline at Paramount's official website for the film (www.waroftheworlds.com).

The film launches in approximately 99% of the worldday-and-date on June 29. For international distributor UIP this meant it wasimportant to get local language trailers of the film into their markets acrossthe globe as quickly following the US debut as possible.

A massive undertaking, the company worked with Paramount,Pacific Title and Deluxe in Los Angeles and The Picture Production Company inLondon to put out 26 alternative language teaser trailers for the internationalmarket.

Charles Evans, vice president of creative services at UIP,admitted, 'I have never undertaken something this big in so short a time.It was a massive collaboration.'

Paramount started to produce the teaser three to four weeksprior to its debut according to Evans. The teaser uses a narrative voiceoverwhich is a virtual lift from Wells' novel and features footage speciallyshot for the teaser. Sound and images were signed off by Spielberg on SaturdayDec 4.

Knowing the text of the narration in advance of seeingimages UIP were able to record the various language voice tracks two weeksahead of mixing. This helped in enabling the company to mix the trailers intime to have all masters ready by Tuesday Dec 7. By Friday Dec 10 all versionswere ready to ship to arrive in international territories for Monday when theteaser can start to appear on TVstations.

Languages recorded include Japanese, Russian, Mandarin,Cantonese, Korean, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai and both Tamil and Hindiversions for the Indian market. A separate English version was made for theSouthern hemisphere so that references in the trailer to 'summer'were changed to 'winter'. While in the Korean version the fullnames of star and director appear due to local custom despite playing as simplyCruise, Spielberg elsewhere.

'Digital technology enabled us to do things wecouldn't have done 18 months ago,' Evans told ScreenDaily.com. When the language track had to be re-recorded forthe French market the company were able to re-record the audio in Paris,transfer the file to Los Angeles for mixing and receive the end result back inParis within 24 hours.

The international market consistently proves stronger forSpielberg's titles than North America in total grosses. His 2004 film TheTerminal claimed 56% of its worldwide cumulative from international territorieswith $98.8m. The director's last collaboration with Tom Cruise, MinorityReport, claimed $226.3m from internationalterritories, representing 63% of worldwide grosses. Similarly his other recentsci-fi title, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, grossed $157.3m internationally for 67% of worldwide totals.

The War Of The Worldswent into production on Nov 8 this year and co-stars Dakota Fanning and TimRobbins.

The trailer will appear in cinemas in most countries aroundthe world by Christmas.