Moustapha Akkad
Encyclopedia
Moustapha Akkad was a Syrian American
film producer
and director
, best known for producing the series of Halloween
films and directing Mohammad, Messenger of God and Lion of the Desert
. He was killed along with his daughter Rima Akkad Monla in 2005 in Amman, Jordan by a suicide bomber.
, Syria
. His father, then a customs officer
, gave him $200 and a copy of the Quran before he left for the United States
to study film direction and production at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Akkad spent a further three years studying for a Master's degree
at the University of Southern California
(USC), where he met the director Sam Peckinpah
. Peckinpah became Akkad's mentor in Hollywood and hired him as a consultant for a film about the Algerian revolution that never made it to the big screen, but he continued to encourage him until he found a job as a producer at CBS
.
In 1976, he produced and directed Mohammad, Messenger of God
(released as The Message in 1977 in the United States), starring Anthony Quinn
and Irene Papas
. Akkad faced resistance from Hollywood to make the film in Morocco.
While creating Muhammad, Messenger of God, he consulted Islamic clerics and tried to be respectful toward Islam and its views on portraying Prophet
Muhammad
. He got the Approval from the Al Azhar in Egypt but was rejected by Muslim World League in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Government of Kuwait, Libya and Morocco promised to support the film financially, but when it was rejected by the Muslim World League, Kuwait withdrew it financial support. King Hassan II of Morocco gave him full support for the production of the film. The production took one year, Akkad filmed 6 months in Morocco, but had to stop when the Saudi Government exerted a great pressure on Morocco to stop the production. Akkad went to president Qaddafi of Libya for support to complete the project, Qaddafi allowed him to move the filming to Libya for the remaining 6 months until the film was finalized.
Akkad saw the film as a way to bridge the gap between the Western and Islamic world, stating in a 1976 interview:
In 1978, he helped make low-budget film history when he produced Halloween
. Akkad became best known for his key involvement in the first eight Halloween movies, as an executive producer
(the only producer to participate in all of these films). The series was highly profitable, although it was only the first film that became iconic.
In 1980 he directed Lion of the Desert
, in which Quinn and Irene Papas were joined by Oliver Reed
, Rod Steiger
, and John Gielgud
. It was about the real-life Bedouin
leader Omar Mukhtar
(Quinn), who fought Benito Mussolini
's Italian troops in the deserts of Libya
. The movie is now critically acclaimed, after initially receiving negative publicity in the West for being partially funded by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi
, who invested $35 million in the movie. This negative publicity may have been the cause of its relatively poor performance at the box office.
In the United Kingdom
Akkad once tried to buy Pinewood Studios
from the Rank Organisation
and also had a studio at Twickenham
. At the time of his death, he was in the process of producing an $80 million movie featuring Sean Connery
about Saladin
and the Crusades
, for which he already had the script, that would be filmed in Jordan
. Speaking of the film, he said:
Syrian American
Syrian Americans are residents of the United States of Syrian ancestry or nationality. This group includes Americans of Syrian ancestry, Syrian first generation immigrants, or descendants of Syrians who emigrated to the United States. Syrian Americans may be members of a number of differing...
film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, best known for producing the series of Halloween
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
films and directing Mohammad, Messenger of God and Lion of the Desert
Lion of the Desert
Lion of the Desert is a 1981 Libyan historical action film starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin leader fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II and Oliver Reed as Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, who attempted to defeat Mukhtar. It was...
. He was killed along with his daughter Rima Akkad Monla in 2005 in Amman, Jordan by a suicide bomber.
Early life and career
Akkad was born July 1, 1930 in AleppoAleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
. His father, then a customs officer
Customs officer
A customs officer is a law enforcement agent who enforces customs laws, on behalf of a government.-Hong Kong:4 931 posts, of which nine are directorate officers, 3 804 are members of the Customs and Excise Department, 504 are Trade Controls Officers and 614 are staff of the General and Common...
, gave him $200 and a copy of the Quran before he left for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to study film direction and production at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Akkad spent a further three years studying for a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
(USC), where he met the director Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
. Peckinpah became Akkad's mentor in Hollywood and hired him as a consultant for a film about the Algerian revolution that never made it to the big screen, but he continued to encourage him until he found a job as a producer at CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
.
In 1976, he produced and directed Mohammad, Messenger of God
Mohammad, Messenger of God (film)
Mohammad, Messenger of God is a 1976 film directed by Moustapha Akkad chronicling the life and times of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam...
(released as The Message in 1977 in the United States), starring Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn
Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca , more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican American actor, as well as a painter and writer...
and Irene Papas
Irene Papas
Irene Papas is a Greek actress and occasional singer, who has starred in over seventy films in a career spanning more than fifty years.-Life:...
. Akkad faced resistance from Hollywood to make the film in Morocco.
While creating Muhammad, Messenger of God, he consulted Islamic clerics and tried to be respectful toward Islam and its views on portraying Prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
. He got the Approval from the Al Azhar in Egypt but was rejected by Muslim World League in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Government of Kuwait, Libya and Morocco promised to support the film financially, but when it was rejected by the Muslim World League, Kuwait withdrew it financial support. King Hassan II of Morocco gave him full support for the production of the film. The production took one year, Akkad filmed 6 months in Morocco, but had to stop when the Saudi Government exerted a great pressure on Morocco to stop the production. Akkad went to president Qaddafi of Libya for support to complete the project, Qaddafi allowed him to move the filming to Libya for the remaining 6 months until the film was finalized.
Akkad saw the film as a way to bridge the gap between the Western and Islamic world, stating in a 1976 interview:
In 1978, he helped make low-budget film history when he produced Halloween
Halloween (1978 film)
Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut and the first installment in the Halloween franchise. The film is set in the fictional midwestern...
. Akkad became best known for his key involvement in the first eight Halloween movies, as an executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
(the only producer to participate in all of these films). The series was highly profitable, although it was only the first film that became iconic.
In 1980 he directed Lion of the Desert
Lion of the Desert
Lion of the Desert is a 1981 Libyan historical action film starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin leader fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II and Oliver Reed as Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, who attempted to defeat Mukhtar. It was...
, in which Quinn and Irene Papas were joined by Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. Reed exemplified his real-life macho image in "tough guy" roles...
, Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
, and John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
. It was about the real-life Bedouin
Bedouin
The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...
leader Omar Mukhtar
Omar Mukhtar
Omar Mukhtar , of the Mnifa, was born in the small village of Janzour, near Tobruk in eastern Barqa in Libya. Beginning in 1912, he organized and, for nearly twenty years, led native resistance to Italian colonization of Libya. The Italians captured and hanged him in 1931...
(Quinn), who fought Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's Italian troops in the deserts of Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. The movie is now critically acclaimed, after initially receiving negative publicity in the West for being partially funded by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
, who invested $35 million in the movie. This negative publicity may have been the cause of its relatively poor performance at the box office.
In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Akkad once tried to buy Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
from the Rank Organisation
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
and also had a studio at Twickenham
Twickenham
Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...
. At the time of his death, he was in the process of producing an $80 million movie featuring Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...
about Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
and the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, for which he already had the script, that would be filmed in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
. Speaking of the film, he said:
Death
Akkad and his 34-year-old daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, were killed in the November 9, 2005 Amman bombings in Amman, Jordan. They were both in the lobby at the Grand Hyatt when a suicide bomber sent by Al-Qaeda detonated his device; his daughter died instantly, and Akkad died of his injuries two days later in a hospital. Moustapha Akkad is survived by his former wife, Patricia Akkad and their sons, Tarik and Malek who helped produce most of the Halloween movies, as well as his widow, Suha Ascha Akkad, and their son Zaid.Filmography
- Mohammed, Messenger of GodMohammad, Messenger of God (film)Mohammad, Messenger of God is a 1976 film directed by Moustapha Akkad chronicling the life and times of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam...
(1976) - HalloweenHalloween (1978 film)Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut and the first installment in the Halloween franchise. The film is set in the fictional midwestern...
(1978) - Lion of the DesertLion of the DesertLion of the Desert is a 1981 Libyan historical action film starring Anthony Quinn as Libyan tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, a Bedouin leader fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II and Oliver Reed as Italian General Rodolfo Graziani, who attempted to defeat Mukhtar. It was...
(1980) - Halloween IIHalloween IIHalloween II is a 1981 slasher film directed by Rick Rosenthal, and written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. It is the second installment in the Halloween series and is a direct sequel to the Halloween set on the same night of October 31, 1978 as the seemingly unkillable Michael Myers continues to...
(1981) - Halloween III: Season of the WitchHalloween III: Season of the WitchHalloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis,...
(1982) - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael MyersHalloween 4: The Return of Michael MyersHalloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is a 1988 slasher film and the fourth installment of the Halloween film series, directed by Dwight H. Little and written by Alan B. McElroy. The central plot focuses on Michael Myers returning home to kill his niece Jamie Lloyd , the daughter of Laurie...
(1988) - Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael MyersHalloween 5: The Revenge of Michael MyersHalloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a 1989 American slasher film and the fifth installment in the Halloween film series. It was directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard and starred Donald Pleasence, who again portrayed Dr. Sam Loomis and Danielle Harris, who returned to play Jamie Lloyd...
(1989) - Halloween: The Curse of Michael MyersHalloween: The Curse of Michael MyersHalloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is a 1995 American horror film and the sixth installment in the Halloween series. Directed by Joe Chappelle from a screenplay by Daniel Farrands, the plot involves the "Curse of Thorn", a mystical symbol first shown in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers...
(1995) - Halloween H20: 20 Years LaterHalloween H20: 20 Years LaterHalloween H20: Twenty Years Later is a 1998 slasher film and is the seventh installment in the Halloween film series. It is directed by Steve Miner and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, and Michelle Williams. The screenplay, based on a story by Kevin Williamson further developed by Robert...
(1998) - Halloween: ResurrectionHalloween: ResurrectionHalloween: Resurrection is a 2002 American horror film and eighth installment in the Halloween film series. Directed by Rick Rosenthal, who had also directed Halloween II, the film builds upon the continuity of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later...
(2002)