Brenda Starr was conceived as a modest, glossy adventure movie, but its financing and distribution became a labyrinth of inexperienced producers, foreign money, missing rights, and competing lawsuits. In 1984, Tomorrow Entertainment producer Myron Hyman obtained the opportunity to develop Dale Messick's comic-strip heroine. The project gained unexpected financial muscle when Teri Shields, Brooke Shields's mother, introduced Hyman to Sheik Abdul Aziz al Ibrahim, a brother-in-law of Saudi King Fahd. Ibrahim agreed to finance the film through a newly created New York company, Mystery Man Productions, on the condition that Brooke Shields star, that the film be shot in the United States and Puerto Rico, and that Timothy Dalton play the male lead. Financing initially came from Ibrahim's accounts at the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose collapse in 1991 would become one of the era's major international banking scandals. The film was ultimately financed partly with cash and partly with BCCI loans, while its reported cost fluctuated wildly: Hyman put the budget at roughly $14 million, director Robert Ellis Miller said $15 million, and an internal audit attributed $22.3 million to the production.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Saudi-Financed Comic-Book Film Trapped in a Seven-Year Rights War
Brenda Starr / 1980s
Brenda Starr was conceived as a modest, glossy adventure movie, but its financing and distribution became a labyrinth of inexperienced producers, foreign money, missing rights, and competing lawsuits. In 1984, Tomorrow Entertainment producer Myron Hyman obtained the opportunity to develop Dale Messick's comic-strip heroine. The project gained unexpected financial muscle when Teri Shields, Brooke Shields's mother, introduced Hyman to Sheik Abdul Aziz al Ibrahim, a brother-in-law of Saudi King Fahd. Ibrahim agreed to finance the film through a newly created New York company, Mystery Man Productions, on the condition that Brooke Shields star, that the film be shot in the United States and Puerto Rico, and that Timothy Dalton play the male lead. Financing initially came from Ibrahim's accounts at the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose collapse in 1991 would become one of the era's major international banking scandals. The film was ultimately financed partly with cash and partly with BCCI loans, while its reported cost fluctuated wildly: Hyman put the budget at roughly $14 million, director Robert Ellis Miller said $15 million, and an internal audit attributed $22.3 million to the production.
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