the gap between the Western and Muslim worlds, 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 films, as an executive producer (the only producer to participate in all of these films). The series was highly profitable and hugely influential to subsequent horror films. 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 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. Clint Morris describes the movie as: "A grand epic adventure that'll stand as a highpoint in the producing career of Moustapha Akkad." In 1985, his production company Trancas International Films had inked an agreement with Galaxy International releasing in order to release films for a seven-picture agreement worldwide. 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: Death Akkad and his 34-year-old daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, were killed in the 2005 Amman bombings. They were both in the lobby at the Grand Hyatt Amman on November 9 when a bomb exploded; his daughter died instantly, and Akkad died of his injuries two days later in a hospital. He is buried in the Al-Jadidah Cemetery in Aleppo in Syria. Akkad was survived by his former wife, Patricia Al Akkad and their sons, Taric and Malek, who helped produce most of the Halloween movies, as well as his widow, Suha Ascha Akkad, and their son Zade. Legacy He was honoured by his native city of Aleppo, and the Aleppo City Council has renamed a school and a street after Moustapha Akkad. In 2008, a street in downtown Beirut was