The animated Holy Week

In December 1998 it was released The Prince of Egyptthe second feature film of the newly created DreamWorkswhich crossed a key moment after being accused of plagiarism by Disney for the previous premiere of Antz who claimed that it was very similar to Vermin. Precisely, this new film was born from a project that was rejected by the Mickey Mouse factory, but it turned out to be a success of criticism and box office.

The Prince of Egypt, the animated film that Disney did not want to do

The Prince of Egypt was the result of a project that had been in the head of Jeffery KatzenbergDisney’s creative president, who left the company to enter the new animation producer, DreamWorks, encouraged by filmmakers as Steven Spielberg.

Katzenberg already proposed in the 80s, when he was working in Disney, an animated version of the biblical episode of the ten commandments, but this was rejected by his team and is something that only recovered when leaving the company, and when his idea was accepted when entering Dreamworks.

In fact, The Prince of Egypt It was raised as the first film that would release the new producer, being already planned for 1995, but then postponed to be published after Antz to compete with Disney’s idea with the launch of Vermin.

The project had experts in theology

This caused Dreamworks to have accusations of plagiarism, but with the premiere of The Prince of Egypt Doubts about the new producer, with a film that was a criticism success and was also a box office being of the last ones that used hand -painted funds, despite the fact that it included digital technology that was used mainly in the scene of the separation of the Red Sea.

In the Prince of Egypt, more than 400 animators, artists and technicians worked, and among which some former Disney were included, as is the case of the writer and screenwriter Brenda Chapman who had participated in golden age projects such as Beauty and the beast either The lion kingwhich caused the animation to have some similarity with the Mickey Mouse mouse factory, although in this case with a tone of greater sobriety.

One of the most critical points was to represent a project for animation of biblical texts, and therefore there was a group of theology experts of the three main religions where Moses is included: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that was one of the things that made him be a success among the public.

Successful collaborators

For this second feature film, Dreamworks had a real luxury cast to put voice to its animated characters, with The newly deceased Val Kimer like Moses, Ralph Fiennes like Ramses, Sandra Bullock as Miriam or Michelle Pfeiffer, Steve Martin, Helen Mirren and Parrick Stewart.

The soundtrack was carried out by the famous Hans Zimmerof which he is part When You Believewho won the Oscar Award for Best Original Song and also meant the only collaboration between Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston in an iconic ballad that has remained among the most prominent cinema.