After a well-received run of action movies including 1992's Rapid Fire, The Crow – everyone thought – would make him Lee a household nameCredit: Moviestore Collection/REX

The immediate impact of the shot was an internal abdominal bleed that reduced Lee’s heartbeat to a whimper. He lay there, going gray, on the apartment floor, while first aid was frantically administered. Rushed to the nearest hospital as soon as an ambulance could arrive, he underwent 12 hours of intermittent surgery and was pronounced dead at 1.03pm the next day.

The accident that had just occurred may be the unluckiest in the history of Hollywood production, for a bleak variety of logistical reasons that only came to light afterwards. It was also among the eeriest and most tragic in a whole set of other ways.

The Crow was meant to be Lee’s big break. He’d already built up a cult following among martial-arts fans, not just because of the legacy of his father, but for a modest if mountingly popular series of his own action flicks – the most recent of which, Rapid Fire (1992), had made a solid profit on a $10m budget.