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After attending St. Johns University and The University of Seville in Spain, Sommers spent four years performing in theatre groups and managing rock'n'roll bands throughout Europe. From there, he relocated to Los Angeles and attended the USC School of Cinema-Television for three years, earning a Master's Degree, where he wrote and directed an awardwinning short film entitled Perfect Alibi.
Sommers went on to write and direct The Adventures of Huck Finn starring Elijah Wood and Jason Robards and Rudyard Kipling's The jungle Book which starred Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes, Sam Neill and John Cleese, both for Walt Disney Pictures, and both which received great critical acclaim. He also wrote and directed the suspense-thriller Deep Rising with Treat Williams and Famke Janssen.
For television, Sommers wrote and executive produced Oliver Twist for director Tony Bill, starring Elijah Wood and Richard Dreyfuss.
He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jana and their daughter Samantha.
In addition to his screenwriting credits, LLOYD FONVIELLE (Screen Story) also has producer and director film credits. As a screenwriter, his credits include Cherry 2000, The Bride and The Lords of Discipline, and he served as a producer on Good Morning Babylon.
In addition, Fonvielle directed Gotham for television.
KEVIN JARRE (Executive Producer/Screen Story) was born in Detroit and raised in Michigan, Arizona and Florida. He then studied acting at UCLA, and, after a stint as an actor, turned his hand to writing scripts and found success with Rambo: First Blood Part II starring Sylvester Stallone.
Jarre wrote the telefilm The Tracker, starring Kris Kristofferson, and co-wrote the feature Navy SEALs, starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn. He also wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed Glory, starring Academy AwardTM-winner Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick, as well as Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, and The Devil's Own, starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt.
He recently produced The Jackal for Universal, which starred Bruce Willis and Richard Gere.
Producers James Jacks and Sean Daniel are partnered in ALPHAVILLE PRODUCTIONS. Since its inception in 1992, the company has produced the hit comedy Michael starring John Travolta, written and directed by Nora Ephron; Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer; the critically acclaimed Dazed and Confused, directed by Richard Linklater; and the box office hit Hard Target, which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme and marked famed action director John Woo's first American film. Alphaville has also produced CB4, Chris Rock's comedy satire; Mallrats, directed by Kevin Smith; the romantic comedy Heart and Souls, directed by Ron Underwood; and The Jackal starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere.
JAMES JACKS (Producer) graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and from Cornell University with an MBA. He was a successful Wall Street stock analyst before leaving that career to write screenplays.
Jacks served as executive producer on the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona. He joined Universal Pictures as Vice President of Acquisitions, later becoming Senior Vice President of Production. During his five years at Universal he was involved in the production of such films as Field of Dreams, Do the Right Thing, Darkman, Tremors, Jungle Fever, American Me and People Under the Stairs. In 1992, Jacks left Universal to go into partnership with Sean Daniel, forming the Alphaville company.
Forthcoming projects include Blood Mark written by Kevin Jarre and Desmond Nakano and The Gift directed by Sam Raimi and written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson.
SEAN DANIEL (Producer) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and began his career with Universal Pictures in 1976 as an assistant. Two years later he was promoted to vice president of production. Daniel served as president of production for the motion picture group from 1984 through 1988.
During this period, he supervised such films as National Lampoon's Animal House, Coal Miner's Daughter, Missing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Brazil, Sea of Love, Field of Dreams, Do the Right Thing and Gorillas in the Mist.
Before partnering with Jim Jacks, Daniel produced the searing portrayal of Latino gang life, American Me, starring Edward James Olmos. He has been a participant in the debate about media and culture, appearing on The McLaughlin Group, NPR and CNBC.
ADRIAN BIDDLE, B. S. C. (Director of Photography) had a successful early career in television commercials, where he won a number of prestigious awards before moving into feature films in 1985 as director of photography for James Cameron's blockbuster hit Aliens.
After lighting such successful movies as The Princess Bride, Willow and The Tall Guy, Biddle worked with director Ridley Scott on Thelma and Louise, for which he received an Oscar® nomination, a BAFTA nomination and a British Society of Cinematographers nomination. He also received a British Society of Cinematographers nomination for his next film, Ridley Scott's 1492.
Since 1993, Biddle has served as director of photography on many films, including City Slickers II, Judge Dredd, Fierce Creatures, 101 Dalmatians, The Butcher Boy, Event Horizon and Holy Man.
ALLAN CAMERON (Production Designer) studied at the Royal College of Art in London and designed television productions for ten years before becoming a freelance designer for films and commercials. As a television designer he won a British Academy Award for Design for Edward and Mrs. Simpson, a joint Prix d'Italia for The Naked Civil Servant and a joint Emmy for Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.
Some of Cameron's additional film credits include: The Fourth Protocol; 1984, for which he received a British Academy Award nomination; Lady Jane; Willow; Highlander; Far and Away; Air America; No Escape; Swing Kids; Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (with director Stephen Sommers); Pinocchio; Showgirls; Starship Troopers; and Tomorrow Never Dies.
BOB DUCSAY (Editor) has worked with director Stephen Sommers on three films prior to The Mummy: The Adventures of Huck Finn, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Deep Rising. Additional film credits include Tremors II: Aftershocks, Love and a.45 and Star Kid. For television, he has edited the pilot for LA Doctors.
Ducsay holds a Master of Fine Arts from USC's School of Cinema-Television, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
PATRICIA CARR (Co-Producer) has been a leading member of the British Film Industry for over twenty-five years, with a wealth of experience on the production side of international feature films. After acting as assistant to the legendary director Fred Zinnemann, Carr worked in various production capacities on films such as The Fourth Protocol, King David, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Superman, Star Wars, The Blue Bird, Day of the Jackal, Fiddler on the Roof and The Last Valley. She was assistant production manager on films including The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi; production manager on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Not Quite Jerusalem, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Consuming Passions; production supervisor on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Alien 3; and line producer on Jekyll and Hyde and A Month by the Lake.
Recently, she has co-produced Fierce Creatures and Get Real.
Academy AwardTM-winner JERRY GOLDSMITH (Composer) is one of Hollywood's most respected creators of dramatic music for motion pictures.
A native Angeleno who studied composition and film music at USC, Goldsmith began his professional career in radio and went on to create some of the most familiar television themes of the '50s and '60s, including The Waltons, Dr. Kildare and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He composed his first score for a theatrical feature film in 1957, for Black Patch.
Since then, Goldsmith has scored over 175 feature films and has received 18 Academy AwardTM nominations in the Best Original Score category for: Freud, A Patch of Blue, The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen (Best Score and Best Song), The Boys From Brazil, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Poltergeist, Under Fire, Hoosiers, Basic Instinct, L.A. Confidential and Mulan.
Goldsmith won the Oscar' in 1976 for his work on The Omen. His other feature credits include The List of Adrian Messenger, The Blue Max, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Islands in the Stream, Capricorn One, Alien, First Blood, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Gremlins, Total Recall, The Russia House, Sleeping with the Enemy, Rudy, The Shadow, The River Wild, First Knight, The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One and Star Trek: Insurrection.
JOHN BLOOMFIELD's (Costume Designer) film credits as a costume designer include Kevin Costner's The Postman; Space Truckers; Waterworld; Rapa Nui; Christopher Columbus: The Discovery; Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he received a 1992 BAFTA nomination for Best Costume Design; Conan the Destroyer; Conan the Barbarian; The Bounty; and Eye of the Needle. On television, he received an Emmy nomination in 1998 for TNT's production of The Hunchback.
Bloomfield has also worked extensively for BBC Television and his work there was widely acclaimed for series including The Six Wives of Henry VIII, for which he won a BAFTA Award, Poldark and She Fell Among Thieves.
He has also designed many theatre productions for most of the UK's leading repertory companies, as well as the English National Opera, the Welsh Drama Company, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Hong Kong Festival.
SIMON CRANE (Stunt Coordinator) is one of the busiest stunt coordinators working today. His many impressive film credits as stunt coordinator include Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, GoldenEye and Braveheart. Crane recently completed production on the new James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.
An accomplished stuntman as well, the films in which he has performed stunts include Cliffhanger (which featured the world's first jet-to-jet transfer), Alien 3, Total Recall, License to Kill, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Living Daylights and Aliens.
JOHN BERTON (Visual Effects Supervisor) joined the computer graphics team at Industrial Light & Magic in 1990 and his first project was the blockbuster hit Terminator 2: Judgment Day, for which he served as computer graphics animator and which received the 1991 Academy AwardTM for Best Visual Effects.
His subsequent feature film credits at ILM include: Star Trek VI; Death Becomes Her; Jurassic Park, which won the Academy AwardTM in 1993 for Best Visual Effects; The Flintstones; Baby's Day Out; The Mask (which was nominated for an Academy Award" for Best Visual Effects); Casper; Men in Black, which received a 1998 BAFTA nomination for Best Visual Effects; and Stephen Sommers' Deep Rising.
Awards Berton has won include the Monitor Award for Best Computer Graphics Animation for the 1984 Superbowl on CBS, the Nicograph Grand Prize for Computer Animation for Snoot and Muttly and the Prix Ars Electronica, Honorable Mention for Mental Images.
London-born CHRIS CORBOULD (Special Effects Supervisor) entered into the world of special effects in 1974. The first ten years of his career was spent learning all the basic aspects of this unique craft, ranging from hydraulics, machine work, welding, fabrication and pyrotechnics to the complicated disciplines involved when actually filming the special effects.
After this initial period of training, Corbould put these skills to test on films such as Superman (I, II and III), The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill as a special effects technician and senior technician. The knowledge gained over these precious years caused him to be given the additional responsibility of floor supervisor under the overall supervisor. Corbould excelled in this capacity on films such as The Living Daylights, License to Kill, Willow, Delta Force, Interview With the Vampire, Far and Away, Hudson Hawk, and Highlander II.
The big break for Corbould as supervisor inevitably happened on Nightbreed. He then continued his own brand of magic within special effects on films including Shadowlands, GoldenEye, The Ghost and the Darkness, Tomorrow Never Dies and Firestorm on locations all over the world. He is currently supervising the special effects sequences on The World Is Not Enough, the latest and most spectacular James Bond film to date.
NICK DUDMAN (Live Action Creature Effects Supervisor) most recently completed work as creature effects supervisor on George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
Dudman entered the film industry in 1979 when he served as a trainee by British make-up artist Stuart Freeborn during the making of The Empire Strikes Back, where he worked on Yoda. He remained with Freeborn for nearly four years learning all aspects of the craft, and together they worked on Superman II, Top Secret! and Return of the Jedi.
Dudman was later hired by American make-up maestro Dick Smith to be his assistant on The Hunger, helping him age David Bowie over 100 years and creating the many blood effects. There, he also headed up the English make-up laboratory for Ridley Scott's Legend and worked with director Neil Jordan on Mona Lisa, High Spirits, The Miracle and Interview With the Vampire.
Other film credits include: George Lucas' Willow; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Batman; Alien 3; The Last of the Mohicans; Judge Dredd; and The Fifth Element, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Visual Effects.
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