MUMBAI: On a mysterious Friday evening of  5 August  a throng of excited and eager movie fans gathered at PVR Cinema outlets in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore to witness a never before seen initiative in India - The Star Movies Secret Screening.

An exclusive invite only closed door movie screening that gives the participating ‘secret keepers’ a rare opportunity to watch some of the biggest Hollywood movies weeks before its actual international release.

Everybody loves a secret, but how many can keep one? The experience began with Star Movies and a select few of their secret keepers. After Star Movies and their secret keepers popped the question to their followers, instant curiosity picked up and secret screening became the buzz word.

The would-be secret keepers had to visit a URL and request for a secret knock code. And once they receive the code, they need to enter it on the website to generate an invite for the secret screening. The experience continued at the screening and finally Star Movies and Fox Star Studios together unveiled the mega secret – The Maze Runner – screening weeks before its worldwide release.

The impact: Star Movies’ asked its viewers if they can keep a secret, they replied with an emphatic ‘YES’ that resulted in 30 million impressions and over 5000 mentions on Twitter. No wonder then, that #StarMoviesSecretScreening trended nationally.

On the occasion, Star India English Cluster general manager Kevin Vaz said, “At Star Movies we always believe in creating experiences for our viewers through strong engagement opportunities and high impact campaigns. We are proud to present a first-of-its-kind concept in India - Star Movies Secret Screening. A private screening of some special movies held only for a select few movie enthusiasts’ weeks before its worldwide release. We are happy with the overwhelming response and as always we will continue to constantly engage our audience with such immersive experiences.”

Fox Star Studios chief marketing officer Shikha Kapur said, "The Maze Runner has been getting great reviews worldwide. When you have a strong product like this, it is important to create evangelists out of audiences and this activity was aimed at doing so. We were sure that audiences would love The Maze Runner and hence confident of screening the film 2 weeks prior to the Worldwide release. We at Fox Star Studios try and push the envelope of marketing with every film. I think we were hugely successful as it took social media by storm & are proud to have partnered with Star Movies for this initiative. Given the responses we have got from the screening, we are confident the film will be received very well in India, when it releases on 19th September."