It's A Wrap

"By the power of Osiris! By the heart of Ptah! By the strength of Isis! By the eye of Ra!" With these individual battle cries, the four mummy heroes of "Mummies Alive" prepare themselves to combat their archenemy, the evil sorcerer Scarab. Scarab's goal? World domination, of course. Before he takes over modern-day society, however, the recently unearthed sorcerer must ensure his own immortality with the reluctant help of a 12-year-old San Francisco boy who just happens to be the reincarnated son of an Egyptian pharaoh. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

"First and foremost, you have to have good stories and rich characters--you can't do anything without them," says Andy Heyward, president of DIC Entertainment LP, the Burbank, California-based children's entertainment company that's producing the animated series. "If you try to circumvent that process--or corrupt it--then you end up going down a bad track. If you start out thinking `How am I going to create toys?' you're never going to have good stories. And if the stories aren't good, the kids won't watch it--and it won't have any interest for anybody."

Heyward, a longtime veteran of children's programming, initially dreamed up the idea for a show revolving around mummies after a family visit two years ago to the British Museum in London. "I couldn't help but marvel at the fascination my kids had for the mummies [they saw there]," he explains.

Sensing he'd hit upon a winning concept, Heyward teamed up with well-known director/producer Ivan Reitman to create "Mummies Alive." Having already worked together on "The Real Ghostbusters" series, DIC and Reitman's company, Northern Lights Productions Inc., reunited to bring the mummies program to life.

This article was originally published in the September 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: It's A Wrap.