The Prince of Egypt, released in 1998, stands as a landmark achievement in animation history. Directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, this American animated musical drama adapted the Book of Exodus, telling the story of Moses' journey from prince to prophet. As the first traditionally animated film from DreamWorks Animation, it marked a significant milestone for the studio and the animation industry.
The film features songs written by Stephen Schwartz and a score composed by Hans Zimmer.
Film poster
The Genesis of a Dream
The project began with DreamWorks co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had long envisioned an animated adaptation of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments. Katzenberg decided to put the idea into production after leaving Disney and co-founding DreamWorks Pictures in 1994.
The idea for The Prince of Egypt was discussed at the formation of DreamWorks Pictures on October 12, 1994, when Katzenberg's partners, Amblin Entertainment founder Steven Spielberg, and music producer David Geffen, were meeting in Spielberg's living room. Katzenberg had wanted to tackle "bigger-than-life stories", like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Terminator (both 1984) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
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To bring this vision to life, DreamWorks assembled a talented team of artists, many of whom had previously worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation and Amblimation, totaling a crew of 350 people from 34 countries.
Crafting the Story
The Prince of Egypt was "written" throughout the story process. Beginning with a starting outline, story supervisors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook led a team of fourteen storyboard artists and writers as they sketched out the entire film-sequence by sequence. Once the storyboards were approved, they were put into the Avid Media Composer digital editing system by editor Nick Fletcher to create a "story reel" or animatic.
Voice Acting and Character Design
For the film, the actors recorded individually in a studio under guidance by one of the three directors. The voice tracks were to become the primary aspect as to which the animators built their performances.
Character designers Carter Goodrich, Carlos Grangel and Nico Marlet worked on setting the design and overall look of the characters. Drawing on various inspirations for the widely known characters, the team of character designers worked on designs that had a more realistic feel than the usual animated characters up to that time. Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments.
Consideration was given to depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians properly.
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The backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts.
Animating the Divine: Special Effects and Music
There are 1,192 scenes in the film, and 1,180 contain work done by the special effects department, which animates everything in an animated scene which is not a character: blowing wind, dust, rainwater, shadows, etc.
The task of creating God's voice was given to Lon Bender and the team working with the film's music composer, Hans Zimmer. According to Bender: "The challenge with that voice was to try to evolve it into something that had not been heard before. We did a lot of research into the voices that had been used for past Hollywood movies as well as for radio shows, and we were trying to create something that had never been previously heard not only from a casting standpoint but from a voice manipulation standpoint as well".
Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz began working on writing songs for the film from the beginning of its production. As the story evolved, he continued to write songs that would serve both to entertain and help move the story along. Composer Hans Zimmer arranged and produced the songs and then eventually wrote the film's score.
The Prince of Egypt - The Making Of (Part 1 of 3)
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The Parting of the Red Sea
One of the most challenging and visually stunning sequences in the film is the parting of the Red Sea. Henry LaBounta, who worked on the sequence, shared insights into the process:
Henry LaBounta: It was tricky because I know back then the whole idea of using anything computer graphics generated in an animated film was something not really done on a big scale. The challenge is, in general, it’s easy to get in there and start making something that looks like some big visual effects kind of thing, which suddenly looks nothing like the rest of the film. So we had to develop techniques to incorporate an animation style within the effect of parting the Red Sea.
He further explained the software and techniques used:
Henry LaBounta: DreamWorks had a great background painting department that would also do concepts for the film. They had already made some backgrounds for the parting of the Red Sea, and were working on some ideas of what this moment might look like. So our challenge was, how can we really bring that to life and animate it in an interesting way?
Reception and Legacy
The Prince of Egypt premiered at Royce Hall in Los Angeles on December 16, 1998, and was released in theaters on December 18, followed by a release on home video on September 14, 1999. Reviews were generally positive; critics particularly praised the visuals, songs, score, and voice acting.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 92 reviews and an average rating of 7.1/10. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film in his review saying that "The Prince of Egypt is one of the best-looking animated films ever made. It employs computer-generated animation as an aid to traditional techniques, rather than as a substitute for them, and we sense the touch of human artists in the vision behind the Egyptian monuments, the lonely desert vistas, the thrill of the chariot race, the personalities of the characters.
The film grossed $218 million worldwide in theaters, which made it the most successful non-Disney animated feature at the time. The song "When You Believe" became a commercially successful single in a pop version performed by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. The song won Best Original Song at the 71st Academy Awards, making The Prince of Egypt the first animated film independently outside of Disney and Pixar films, as well as the first DreamWorks Animation film, to receive Academy Awards, succeeded by Shrek (2001) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Since its release, the film continues to receive acclaim from critics and audiences alike. When the film reached its 20th anniversary, SyFy made a retrospective review of The Prince of Egypt, calling it the greatest animated film of all time, predominantly due to its voice cast, animation, characters, cinematography, and most importantly, its musical score. Lisa Laman of Collider wrote that it "stands out" among the other films in DreamWorks Animation's catalog for its dark but inspirational and uplifting tone when compared to the studio's later titles.
In July 2023, to celebrate the film's 25-year anniversary, many crew members who worked on the film, including directors Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner and Simon Wells, songwriter Stephen Schwartz, and cast members Amick Byram and Eden Riegel, reunited by participating in a 3-hour livestream on YouTube on The Tammy Tuckey Show.
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