FILM 2326: THE JEWEL OF THE NILE (1985)

TRIVIA: The end title song is Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going". In the music video for the song, stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVitolipsync and dance as doo-wop backup singers. Because the three stars were not members of the Musicians Union, the video was banned in the UK. Despite this handicap, the song would be Ocean's first #1 UK hit.

Kathleen Turner resisted making the sequel because of her money squabble over the original, and because she didn't like the script, over which she had negotiated approval. She only signed after Fox filed a $25 million lawsuit against her.

Romancing the Stone (1984), the predecessor of this film, was the only produced screenplay for writer Diane Thomas. She had been working as a waitress in Malibu when producer/star Michael Douglas optioned her script for $250,000, allowing her to quit her job. Sadly, Thomas died in a car accident, while working on a new movie project with Steven Spielberg the following year, about seven weeks before the opening of this film. She was a passenger while her boyfriend was driving a Porsche that Douglas had bought for her as a thank you gift. This film is dedicated "In Memory of" Thomas.

Danny DeVito compares the final crowd fight scene to Our Lady of Mount Carmel school. This was the name of the school De Vito actually attended.

The F-16 fighter mock-up replicated the aerodynamic contours of a real plane so well that its nose would actually start to lift off the ground if it taxied too fast.

There were plans of an ongoing franchise ala Indiana Jones; and The Crimson Eagle and Racing the Monsoon were proposed sequels; involving Joan and Jack and their teenaged children going on another globetrotting treasure hunt expedition together. There were also plans of rebooting the franchise with Taylor Kitsch and Katherine Heigl. But all of this was eventually scrapped.