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To: taffard who wrote (108100)	11/7/1999 7:57:00 PM
From: rowrowrow	Respond to of 119973

E! Online news Pokémon takes Los Angeles NOVEMBER 4 — Call it the monster that ate Hollywood. Pocket monster, that is. Fans of the hottest thing to hit the preteen circuit since the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers caused a telephone meltdown at Warner Bros. offices in Los Angeles when they jammed the lines with nearly 70,000 calls per minute to win tickets to Saturday's world premiere of Pokémon: The First Movie. A local L.A. television station announced the contest Monday morning and the subsequent telephone barrage caused the movie studio to shut down its voice mail system. Pokémon secrets revealed! Also affected by the telephone deluge were Burbank neighbors Disney and NBC, who suffered disrupted service. "This is absolutely without precedent," said Warners president of domestic marketing Brad A. Ball. "That one announcement on the local morning news could provoke such an enormous response is an incredibly exciting indicator of Pokémon's appeal." For those without hysterical, phone-wielding children, Pokémon is short for "pocket monsters." The concept began in 1996 as a game for Nintendo's Game Boy and has quickly morphed into a comic book/collecting card/TV show/toy phenomenon. Nowadays, nearly everyone under three feet totes a binder-full of stickers in their backpacks. Pokémon: The First Movie, which will be paired with a short called Pikachu's Vacation that introduces still more collectible critters, opens November 10 nationwide two days earlier than originally planned. And, based on the monstrous popularity of the pocket monsters, box-office watchers are predicting that Pokémon could be the biggest 'toon outside the Magic Kingdom ever. "All we have to do is look at The Rugrats Movie," explains Paul Dergarabedian, president of the ticket-tallying firm Exhibitor Relations. "That was a film based on a TV show where the timing was just perfect. The same holds true for Pokémon. The kids' interest is at a fever pitch right now, so what better time to release it. "It's a can't-miss situation." Paramount's Rugrats holds the record for highest-grossing non-Disney animated film opening, with $27.3 million in 1998, according to Exhibitor Relations. The film went on to top the $100 million mark.