Major campaign to back The Sum of All Fears film and game launch

In the film, starring Ben Affleck, which like the game is based on the Tom Clancy novel, fascist groups plan a nuclear strike on America in hopes of sparking off a major war between East and West.

Unusually for a major Hollywood film, it is being launched in the UK alongside Ubi Soft's PC game, which is due to hit the stores on August 9. Both are already out in the US and have met with widespread success, despite the action being similar to events of September 11.

In the film, which was made before September 11 but delayed, it is not New York that is hit, but the US State of Baltimore that becomes the target.

The campaign for the game is set to go far beyond the games press advertising that is used to launch most games. Instead, it will be backed by consumer print ads, trade ads, mainstream and specialist PR coverage, online campaigns and in-store activity.

Press ads will appear in magazines including Loaded, Empire, Hotdog, Total Film and Max Power. The consumer magazine campaign will be backed by ads running in the games press in magazines such as PC Gamer and PC Zone.

In the game, a band of renegade militia members from the hills of West Virginia seize a television station and broadcast their demands on the air. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team is called in to deal with the situation, which eventually moves to the diamond mines of South Africa, the deserts of the Middle East and to the corridors of wealth and power in Austria.

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