BigStar Entertainment to Sponsor Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival.

Business/High Tech & Entertainment Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2000

Bigstar.com Expected to Gain Significant Exposure at

Premier Online Film Festival Held in Hollywood During Oscars

BigStar Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: BGST), which operates www.bigstar.com, a leading Shop-a-Tainment(TM) filmed entertainment destination site, today announced that the company would be a major sponsor of the Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival. Designed to showcase the different ways that filmmakers, film Web sites, digital technology companies, major studios and independent companies are using the Internet to present the moving image, the festival will be held in Hollywood, March 22nd and 23rd.

As part of this sponsorship agreement, the print component of BigStar's "Big Star" multi-media advertising campaign will be featured prominently on signage throughout the screening site at the Directors Guild of America theatre and at the exhibition sites located at the Chateau Marmont and The Standard hotels in West Hollywood. "Big Stars" will feature magnified views of specific facial characteristics of well-known movie stars. Designed to be entertaining and engaging, the advertisements will challenge the viewer's familiarity with celebrities and is designed to reinforce BigStar's Shop-a-Tainment strategy. A series campaign, "Big Stars" will introduce a different star every couple weeks.

In addition, BigStar has created a special section in its bigstar.com Broadband Theater section that offers streaming video clips of the films featured at the Festival and a 50% discount to the festival for bigstar.com customers. BigStar will also use the festival to introduce its advertising and sponsorship opportunities to the media buying community, while representatives from BigStar's advertising sales firm will be available to discuss sponsorship opportunities for streaming entertainment content.

David Friedensohn, CEO of BigStar Entertainment, said: "BigStar is proud to sponsor the Yahoo Internet Life Online Film Festival. As the largest provider of streaming movie previews online, bigstar.com is a dramatic influence on the online film community. The Online Film Festival is an excellent opportunity for this rapidly growing business to be supported."

"BigStar, with its wealth of film information, its unique shopping services and its entertainment attractions, is a leading destination on the Internet for film and movie fans," said Jesse Jacobs, director of the Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival. "We are thrilled at the opportunity to work with BigStar to increase awareness of the Internet's ever-expanding role in film and filmmaking."

About Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival

The Festival will feature two days of exhibitions of leading online entertainment companies, seminars and panel discussions, and will conclude with an awards program and closing night gala. The festival is generously sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Sony Electronics, BeautyJungle.com, OnStream, BigStar.com, Yack.com, Honkworm, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Filmmaker Magazine, Paradise Digital Productions, Sundance Channel, Yahoo! Movies, Food.com and Skyy Vodka.

Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine is a monthly publication with a rate base of 900,000. It is published by Ziff-Davis Inc., a leading media and marketing company focused on computing and Internet-related technologies, with principal platforms in print publishing, trade shows and conferences, online content, television and education. Ziff-Davis provides global technology companies with marketing strategies for reaching key decision-makers. Ziff-Davis has two series of common stock, one which is intended to track the performance of its Internet business, ZDNet (NYSE: ZDZ), and one which is intended to track the performance of the ZD Group (NYSE: ZD), which includes print publishing, trade shows and conferences, online learning, education and television businesses, and a retained interest in ZDNet. Ziff-Davis Inc. recently announced an agreement to sell Ziff-Davis Publishing to Willis Stein & Partners. It also announced agreements to sell ZD Education and its interest in ZDTV. These transactions are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2000.

About BigStar Entertainment

BigStar Entertainment Inc. (Nasdaq: BGST) operates bigstar.com (AOL keyword: BigStar), a leading Shop-A-Tainment(TM) destination site, based on internal analysis of traffic, sales and other metrics. Bigstar.com is exclusively dedicated to filmed entertainment products and sells more than 40,000 titles of videos and digital video discs (DVDs). BigStar has forged strategic alliances with companies including ValueVision (Nasdaq: VVTV), StarMedia (Nasdaq: STRM), AOL Moviefone (NYSE: AOL), Shop-at-AOL, Earthlink (Nasdaq: ELNK), Yahoo! Chat (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Flirt.com, among others.

This news release may contain statements of a forward-looking nature relating to the future events or the future financial results of BigStar Entertainment. Investors are cautioned that such statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. In evaluating such statements, investors should specifically consider the various factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated from such forward-looking statements, including the matters set forth in BigStar Entertainment's reports and documents filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.