Two things that you need to know about the teen vampire movie Twilight: it’s a blockbuster smash and, well, the recipient of decidedly mixed reviews. The latter detail, echoed in the reactions of the mainstream media publications Variety (“Anaemic”) and The Hollywood Reporter (“Underwhelming”) is of course irrelevant.

For Twilight, which made a whopping $70 million (£45 million) in its opening weekend in America, represents an increasingly prevalent breed of movie that is not just critic-proof, but quality-proof to boot. Here, the hype is the thing. Instead of boasting the quaint old world charms of story, character and narrative structure, the hyped hit exists solely in its own marketing noise.

The excitement generated by movies such as Twilight, Quantum of Solace and Sex and the City is drawn exclusively from the pre-release buzz, the internet fan forums, the countdowns, the TV spots, guest slots, trailers and teasers. The film itself hardly matters.

With this in mind, here, for budding studio heads everywhere, is a ten-point guide to the art of hyping a hit:

1 Mobilise the women

Women are your ideal target demographic. According to American exit polls, they constituted 75 per cent of Twilight’s audience. Increasingly, in the eyes of studio marketers, women are the new teenage boys. They go to movies in gangs, they do repeat viewings and they spread word-of-mouth buzz. Women drove the box-office successes of Twilight ($183 million and counting), Sex and the City ($401 million) and Mamma Mia! ($568 million).

2 Mobilise the fans

Fans of pre-existing source material are the loudest champions of movie adaptations. Through forums and fan sites dedicated to, say, Iron Man or The Dark Knight, they have become a community of hype that is user-generated and — this is why Hollywood loves them — free. Twilight, for instance, was nurtured by a global network of more than 300 fan sites, many of which were visited by Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the original novel.

3 Don’t forget to use the internet

There’s no getting round it. Old-school marketing is dead. A trailer, a poster and a chat-show appearance simply won’t cut it. You have to think online, and think laterally. While hyping her four-book Twilight series, a year before the movie emerged, Meyer arranged, via internet fan sites, to throw a series of prom-night parties for the faithful (Prom Night is big in Twilight), one of which she even attended.

4 Really, don’t forget to use the internet

The monster-hype monster movie Cloverfield demonstrated that you could create a frenzy of interest in a movie without having to stray into mainstream marketing. Instead, the film-makers leaked fake plot details on to fake websites (remember Slusho?), left phone numbers and obscure footage on others, and generally controlled a masterful campaign of disinformation that aroused curiosity and earned the movie $170 million.

5 Prepare to spend big

Twilight’s production budget was $37 million, and studio marketers spent nearly the same again ($30 million) on hype. The recent Meg Ryan chick flick The Women allegedly cost $16 million to make and was marketed for another $25 million. The Dark Knight, according to The Boston Globe, spent as much as $100 million on hyping itself around the world.

6 It’s never too early to start hyping

The campaign for The Dark Knight began a year before the film’s release. The trailer for Cloverfield was released before filming started. A Twilight trailer first appeared on MySpace last April. The formula is simple. Hype + Time = More Hype.

7 Work that cast

If you’re sceptical about the web’s pulling power you can run a simultaneous flesh-pressing campaign. The Twilight hype machine sent its principal cast out on a nationwide US “mall tour”. At a mall in Dallas, they were mobbed by 10,000 fans.

8 Take your movie to Comic-Con

You don’t become a hyped hit until you’ve had the approval of Comic-Con, the world’s largest comic-book festival, held in San Diego every summer. Here, over four long days, 100,000 nerds enjoy drip-fed clips of big studio vehicles (Twilight and Hellboy 2 were hits this year), before running home to their bedrooms to swamp the internet with blind buzz that eventually filters into the mainstream media.

9 Don’t let anyone see the finished product

This year’s over-hyped clunkers Speed Racer, Sex and the City and the latest Indiana Jones flick were kept away from the prying eyes of critics and consumers until the last minute. It makes sense. You don’t want to distract from the beauty of the hype with a pesky little thing like a movie.

10 If all else fails, make a good movie

Look at the indie hit Juno. What did it have? No fan forums, no fake websites, no viral campaigns, no crazed women, no mall tours, no nerds. And it scooped nearly $230 million at the box office. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

— Hype, hype hooray: We’ll stand in line for these in 2009

Star Trek

Brought to you by J. J. Abrams, the man behind this year’s hype hit Cloverfield, this revamp of the Trek franchise is going straight for the teen jugular by imagining the early years and adventures of the Enterprise crew. Step forward Winona Ryder as Spock’s mum, Amanda. Sweet.

Bride Wars

Time for the women to flex their box-office muscle again. This chick flick has monster hit written all over it. Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson star as brides who double-book their wedding in the Plaza Hotel, New York, for the same day. Hilarity, and box-office booty, ensue.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Eighteen months after the previous onslaught of the fanboys’ favourite robots in disguise, and director Michael Bay has announced that the teaser poster will be released early next month, followed closely by a trailer, followed closer still by ubiquitous hype.

Watchmen

It’s impossible to overstate the excitement that this movie is generating among comic fans. Directed by Zack Snyder (300) and based on a comic series by Alan Moore, it is the fanboy’s equivalent of having a real girlfriend. The movie’s not out till March, yet the internet hysteria is already at fever pitch.

Avatar

It’s not released till next Christmas, but Avatar remains one of the year’s genuinely intriguing prospects. The first feature drama to be directed by James Cameron since Titanic (1997), it’s a $200 million, photo-realistic, 3-D computer animation about life on another planet.

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