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by Kathleen Melymuka

(IDG) -- Sure it's only make-believe, but concerns raised by a forthcoming NBC movie about year 2000 are real.

Y2K, scheduled to air on NBC Sunday night, is billed as a suspense thriller about a year 2000 troubleshooter trying, as the network bills it, to "save the world from catastrophic disaster" on New Year's Eve.

But the film is causing headaches for a variety of industries. "A movie that exacerbates fears or plays to people's darker side will result in lots of money being spent by industries just protecting themselves," said John Castagna, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based trade group for the electric power industry.

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Representatives of the energy and financial industries and state officials around the U.S. have asked to preview the film to see what issues it raises, but NBC has so far refused. "We were just hoping that we could be prepared to answer those questions that we think we are going to get asked," said Terrell Halaska, a spokeswoman for the National Governors' Association in Washington.

President Clinton said in the government's Y2K wrap-up report last week that he expects "no major national breakdowns as a result of the year 2000 date change." But Hollywood's script includes a major power outage on the Eastern Seaboard, so some real-world power companies are gearing up in anticipation of customer response.

At PECO Energy Co. in Philadelphia, Y2K project manager Mickey Galatola's call center will be ready after the film airs. "On 9/9/99, we weren't anticipating the calls we got," she said, "and we had to shift hours to make sure our phones were manned. As a result of that, we have decided to be staffed up for after the Y2K movie."

Castagna said he fears that the film will inspire hackers and suggests that companies be on guard for security threats.

But John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association, said he's confident that customers will be able to tell the difference between fact and fiction.

Hall said he sees the movie as an opportunity to educate consumers. "Sometimes at the end of a TV movie there's a lead-in to the 11 o'clock news" commenting on the film, he says. "We'd like to be part of it."

That's what the Chicago mayor's office is doing. Barrett Murphy, a director there, has arranged to work with the local NBC affiliate on a news tie-in immediately after the movie. "They want us to assist in calming public fears," Murphy says. "The tie-in will tell what we've done and how it's really going to be. We don't expect anything to go wrong."