The Prince of Egypt: A VHS Journey Through Animation History

Nov 29, 2025 0

The Prince of Egypt, a 1998 American animated musical drama, marked a significant milestone in animation history. Directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, with a screenplay by Philip LaZebnik, the film is an adaptation of the Book of Exodus. It tells the story of Moses, from his life as an Egyptian prince to his destiny as the prophet who leads the Hebrews out of Egypt.

This cinematic legend is stunning and provocative, violent, tender, harsh, terrifying and life affirming, as is the story of any enslaved people, Dreamworks' version of Exodus is the Old Testament's tale of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt. Though Egypt of the time was the only multi-cultural society in recorded history, there still remained a hated group-the Hebrews. Like much other current animation, it is inappropriate for young children. It is startlingly straightforward about hate, power, pain, anger and love.

In folding hard case. 1 Hours and 39 Minutes. Rated PG. One Owner, USED, NEAR VVG. The Prince of Egypt is a classic for the ages, for audiences of every generation. VHS Video VHS; Movie; An extraordinary tale of two brothers, one born of royal blood one an orphan with a secret past.

Production and Animation

DreamWorks co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had long envisioned an animated adaptation of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments. After leaving Disney and co-founding DreamWorks Pictures in 1994, he decided to bring this idea to life. To realize this project, DreamWorks recruited artists from Walt Disney Feature Animation and Amblimation, assembling a team of 350 people from 34 countries.

The animation team for The Prince of Egypt, including 350 artists from 34 different nations, was primarily recruited both from Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had fallen under Katzenberg's auspices while at the Walt Disney Company, and from Amblimation, a defunct division of Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.

The film was the first traditionally animated film from DreamWorks Animation, and the first to be animated entirely in-house at DWA Glendale after Amblimation was closed in 1997. 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.

The filmmakers initially worked out of Amblin Entertainment's main offices on the Universal Studios Lot, but quickly outgrew them. 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.

Story Development and Accuracy

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.

Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, Katzenberg decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, and Arab American leaders to help his film be more accurate and faithful to the original story.

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.

Read also: "When You Believe" analysis

Voice Acting and Music

After casting of the voice talent concluded, dialogue recording sessions began. 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.

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 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".

The Prince of Egypt Musical | When You Believe

Release and Reception

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. The Prince of Egypt was released on DVD, VHS, and LaserDisc in the United States on September 14, 1999. It was released worldwide over a two-month period, the fastest global rollout for a home media release at the time.

Reviews were generally positive; critics particularly praised the visuals, songs, score, and voice acting. 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).

Legacy and Cultural Impact

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. Laman further noted that the film is "content to let these kinds of dark moments simmer.

Julia Polster of The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote that the film showcases "complex emotions and history in ways even children can appreciate" and positively compared its handling of the portrayal of Jews under oppression to Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List (1993) and the stage musicals Fiddler on the Roof and Parade.

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.

A stage musical adaptation debuted at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, California on October 14, 2017. The show had an international premiere on April 6, 2018, in Denmark at the Fredericia Teater.