Fans who have not even seen Hilary Duff's new film War, Inc are getting excited about a scene where she gets up close and personal with a scorpion.

The memorable scene, which has already been broadcast on YouTube, sees the pop princess, who plays fictional popstar Yonica Babyyeah, drop a scorpion down the front of her trousers in a bid to seduce John Cusack's character.

"The scorpion was scary," she revealed to reporters at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, where the film had its world premiere.

"It was real. We did it about four times and they were like, 'we have a fake one here, but it looks terrible'. And I was like, I can't back out now. I've just got to go for it and impress all the guys on set right now that would probably never do this."

Director Joshua Seftel admitted he was thrilled with the result.

"I don't know that it's ever happened in cinema history before, but I'll tell you one thing - it's the first movie I've ever worked on that had a scorpion wrangler on the set," he said.

And he was keen to add: "No scorpions were hurt in the making of the film. We had a back-up scorpion. You know how sometimes you do movies with little kids, you have twins play the same part? We had twin scorpions."