Now, finally, it was all over. The film was done and dusted, junketed and premiered. Sommers thought it looked pretty good. But that May night in 1999, he would probably never have dared predict just how well it would do: a $43.36-million opening weekend; a worldwide gross of $414 million; a Number One position among the live-action video titles of 1999. And, at the end of it all, it proved to be the 31st most successful film of all time.

Now happily married. Rick and Evelyn (Brendan Foster and Rachel Weisz) are forced back into action when Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo, next page) is somehow revived in thirties London. But, this time, they have a whole new range of adversaries, including the Scorpion King’s dog-headed warriors (above).

Ron Meyer at Universal was a little more prescient than Sommers. “The movie opened on a Friday night,” recalls the latter. “And at 6am Saturday, Ron called and said, ‘We want another.’ I stuttered a bit, didn’t sleep for a week, and after that sat down and started writing.

“By the time we had finished making the first film,” he continues, “we had all these ideas for a sequel that would tell the story with a much larger canvas and feature the next generation of special effects. I wanted to bring back a lot of the same characters in an entirely new adventure without relying on old tricks. I really wanted to outdo myself.”

Which, fortunately, he did - fortunately because all the principals in the original movie had sworn they would never do a second film unless the script was up to snuff. “Brendan, Rachel, John and I had all agreed not to make the sequel unless it could be better,” says Sommers, recalling conversations he had had with Mummy stars Brendan Foster, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah. “Thankfully, when I completed the script, the whole gang loved it.”