Thus far Mamma Mia! shows, movies and albums have generated grosses in excess of $4 billion. She has fond memories also of Universal chairwoman Donna Langley making an early pilgrimage to London to see the show and then returning later on with fellow Universal executives to seal the deal with Craymer’s company Littlestar - which she founded two years before the mothership production opened at the Cameron Mackintosh-owned Prince Edward Theatre - and her film partner, Gary Goetzman at Playtone. “I don’t even think about whether I’m a feminist or not, it’s just part of my makeup,” Craymer says, as she lists the women who have been there for Mamma Mia! over the years, from the many casts that have played the roles all over the world on stage and onscreen, her longtime colleagues and associates. There have been an arsenal of women integral to Mamma Mia’s success in all spheres. The original London company of ‘Mamma Mia!’ Courtesy of Littlestar People would be laughing into their hand, going, ‘They’re all women - it’s going to fail!’ But we did, to use a cliché, break the glass ceiling.” “If you had a woman director and a woman writer and a woman producer now it’s seen as, ‘Wow, you ticked the diversity box,’ and yet it just seemed completely natural at the time back in 1997 when we were first working together. The story of Mamma Mia! is as much about the three women behind it as it is about the three women who perform it on stage: Craymer chose Catherine Johnson to write the book and Phyllida Lloyd to direct. She remembers using her first royalty fee to get the car mended. Funds were low - she couldn’t even afford to fix her car - so we scratched that lunch and went for tea and coffee instead. But all of her money, including an apartment in London’s posh Holland Park area, was tied up in trying to put Mamma Mia! together. Later, as I walk along Piccadilly, I find myself smiling at a memory from possibly 28 years ago, when I was due to lunch with Craymer, at her invitation.

“There is a story there, and I do think Meryl should come back - and if the script is right, she would, I think, because she really loved playing Donna,” Craymer tells me as we settle into a comfy banquette at Charlie’s, a delightfully swanky restaurant located at Brown’s hotel in Mayfair. “I don’t want to over-egg it, but I know there’s a trilogy there,” she says brightly. So far, there’s nothing “official” about MM!3, cautions Craymer. Scoot McNairy To 'Speak No Evil' For Blumhouse & Universal

Accumulation by Buan Boonaca