John Woo's Hostage premieres on BMWFilms.com First of three new films in the award-winning series

Executive Produced By Tony Scott, Ridley Scott and Jules Daly

WOODCLIFF LAKE, NJ, OCTOBER 24, 2002...The ground-breaking BMW Internet Film
Series The Hire returns to the computer screen today with John Woo's Hostage,
premiering today on www.bmwfilms.com.

Hostage, the first of three new The Hire films to debut this fall, received the
2002 Award for Best Action Short from the Los Angeles International Film
Festival last Monday, October 21st.

In this taut action-thriller, The Driver (Clive Owen) is hired to deliver
ransom money for a distinguished C.E.O. (Kathryn Morris) who's been kidnapped.
When the exchange goes awry and the kidnapper (Maury Chaykin) provides a phone
number instead of the hostage, The Driver must race against time to find her
before her cell phone battery - and her air supply - runs out.

John Woo has been captivating movie audiences around the world for more than 30
years as one of the film industry's most respected and unique directors. His
illustrious career began in Hong Kong's thriving film industry, where Woo
directed more than two dozen films including the classics A Better Tomorrow,
Once Upon A Thief, The Killer, and Bullet in the Head. American audiences know
Woo for his romantic, action-packed dramas including: Broken Arrow, Face/Off,
Mission Impossible II and most recently, Windtalkers.

In addition to Hostage, other films in The Hire series include: Ticker by Joe
Carnahan, premiering on November 7th and Beat the Devil directed by Tony Scott
which debuts on November 21st.

The constant in each short film is star Clive Owen, the mysterious, unnamed
driver-for-hire around whom all the films revolve. Joining Owen is an
illustrious supporting cast: Hostage features Chaykin and Morris; Ticker stars
F. Murray Abraham and Don Cheadle with special cameo appearances by Ray Liotta,
Robert Patrick and Dennis Haysbert; and Beat the Devil pits Gary Oldman against
James Brown in a race between good and evil with a special cameo appearance by
Marilyn Manson.

About bmwfilms.com

Hailed by critics across the country as "groundbreaking," with a "cinema
connoisseur's dream team of directors," The Hire Internet film series received
international acclaim when it premiered in 2001 with original short films
directed by five of Hollywood's most noted directors.

More than 14 million film views were registered last year on the
digital-quality streaming video Web site bmwfilms.com for the first five films
of the series directed by John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Guy
Ritchie and Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu.

The second installment of The Hire is executive-produced by Tony Scott, Ridley
Scott and Jules Daly, and produced by RSA USA, Inc. and Fallon Worldwide, and
directed by John Woo, Joe Carnahan and Tony Scott.

BMW Group In America

BMW of North America has been present in the United States since 1975. Since
then, the BMW Group in the United States has grown to include marketing, sales
and financial service organizations for the BMW and MINI brands; a South
Carolina manufacturing operation; DESIGNWORKS/USA, an industrial design firm in
California; a technology office in Silicon Valley and various other operations
throughout the country.

The BMW Group is represented in the U.S. through networks of 340 BMW car, 327
BMW Sports Activity Vehicle, 148 BMW Motorcycle retailers and 69 MINI car
dealers. BMW US Holding Corp., the Group's headquarters for North, Central and
South America, is located in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.