Before filming even began on Ridley Scott's summer blockbuster "Prometheus" screenwriter Damon Lindelof (creator of the hit show "Lost") suggested exploiting the power of social media to help answer audiences' mounting questions about the mysterious plot of the film. The problem: 20th Century Fox was insisting the sci-fi epic bore absolutely no relation to Mr. Scott's "Alien" franchise, but "our position was that this was not entirely the case," says Mr. Lindelof, who has about 200,000 Twitter followers and tweets several times a day.

To help convince fans that there was, in fact, a link to "Alien" without giving away any of the film's secrets, Mr. Lindelof proposed creating a series of original viral videos to be released online. The videos, which were shared and viewed millions of times, were part of an elaborate social media strategy that the studio used to help drum up enthusiasm about the movie long before it was released. (Read more about how social media is helping boost box office results in today's Wall Street Journal here.)

"The real key of these campaigns is getting fans on board, but getting them on board where there's material they can share with their friends," says Ira Rubenstein, Fox's EVP of digital.

The first video, which debuted at the well-known TED conference in February 2012, four months before the release of the movie, featured fictitious industrialist Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) giving a talk at the conference in the year 2023. It was an instant hit, causing #Weyland—the sinister corporate entity that ran the world in the "Alien" franchise—to become a trending topic on Twitter. By the time the movie came out the viral videos had gotten millions of views and were shared across social media platforms.

Speakeasy caught up with Mr. Lindelof, who discussed the effects of the campaign, the pros and cons of having an obsessive audience and why he responds to negative tweets.