On March 3rd, DreamWorks sponsored "The Ring - Samarathon," an event to promote the release of The Ring on DVD and VHS. Daveigh Chase was originally announced to be in attendance for meet and greets, but pulled out at the last moment due to a scheduling conflict. By small way of compensation, a fair amount of movie memorabilia (including posters signed by Naomi Watts) was distributed to attendees.

The event was held Monday, March 3rd, 2003 at 6:15 p.m. at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. Thirty contestants were chosen at random to participate in the contest for a chance to win $10,000. The contestants lined up along the edge of a giant ring of light, each facing a television monitor. At the center of the ring was a pile of videotapes, all blank, except for one: a copy of the cursed video from the film. The first person to find that tape, make a copy of it and throw it into the well would win the $10,000 prize.

Local and national print and electronic media were invited to attend the event. Footage was shot of the contest and sent, via satellite, to the top 150 markets across the United States and Canada. Footage from the event also aired on the March 7th edition of Access Hollywood.

Contributor mikejonas had this to say on the event:

It was very dark, and they were just testing the lighting (when fully lit, the "ring" made a really nice halo in the cloudy sky -- we were on the verge of a rain shower that fortunately didn't happen until early the following morning). I tried to snap some pictures when things were fully lit, but didn't quite do it in time.

The contest originally stated there would be 20,000 tapes. When I first saw the pile I was like, "There's no way that's 20,000 tapes; I have 1,400 VHS tapes at home and I know how big a pile they form." Perhaps they just couldn't buy enough blank tapes.

There were about 100 people who showed up (the first people who were there said they showed up at 4:00), which meant pretty good odds -- it seemed at least one person in every family/friend group that showed up got into the contest. Well, every group except the group consisting of me and my friend, that is. Anyway, they gave away posters to a lucky few, and caps and buttons to everyone.

There were no actual news stations there, just DreamWorks' press crew and a satellite truck to feed the signal to satellites, from which any news station remotely interested in the happening could pick up the footage.

Anyway, what happened was upon entering we all filled out entry forms and placed them in a big, gold-painted urn of some sort, and they picked out the lucky thirty at 6:50. Neither my friend nor I were picked (and it was getting pretty cold out at the Equestrian Center), so we decided not to stick around. We left just as the Samara-alike they hired was rehearsing a walk from the well to the pile for the cameras.

 MORE PICTURES (courtesy of Leroy Patterson)
 For more on the Samarathon, see www.hive4media.com