`PRINCE OF EGYPT' KEPT UNDER WRAPS; DREAMWORKS MARKETS BIBLE-BASED STORY AS ENTERTAINMENT, NOT RELIGION.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Daily News Film Writer

When DreamWorks SKG co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to turn the story of Moses into his studio's first major animated film four years ago, he knew the pathway to parting the Red Sea was littered with land mines. So Katzenberg and studio executives initiated an extraordinary outreach to religious leaders - Christians, Jews and Muslims - to avoid the kind of controversy and protests that have plagued other studios (in particular, Katzenberg's former employer Disney) over the past few years.

In the end, DreamWorks talked to several hundred theologians, historians and archeologists, as well as Christian, Jewish and Muslim authorities. The studio showed its movie, ``The Prince of Egypt,'' for 75 cardinals at the Vatican, as well as for such diverse cultural figures as Jesse Jackson, Billy Graham and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

After the screenings, those who attended offered their opinions and DreamWorks officials took careful notes. It seemed a fair bargain: The studio inoculated itself from criticism while religious leaders came away believing Hollywood cared about their views.

But now on the eve of the Friday release of ``The Prince of Egypt,'' DreamWorks is doing everything it can to distance itself from the its religious themes. Screenings for religious leaders have been canceled or delayed. Commercial spots, movie trailers and print advertisements stress the story's generic elements instead of its biblical roots. And the studio's publicity machine has clamped down on newspapers and media outlets interested in pursuing pieces that mention the Bible before entertainment.

At stake is the box-office fate of a $70 million film (plus some $30 million in marketing costs) and pride. There's little doubt that Katzenberg, who had an acrimonious breakup with Disney in 1994, would love to show up the Mouse with a critically acclaimed hit.

``Jeffrey (Katzenberg) has said several times that his greatest concern is that this movie will be perceived as a religious film,'' says Ted Baehr, a conservative media critic who consulted with DreamWorks throughout the making of ``The Prince of Egypt.''

``For one thing,'' Baehr continues, ``he doesn't think he has made a religious film. He sees it as a mass market entertainment that just happens to be based on a story from the Bible. It's all about accessibility. They don't want the movie to be seen as `medicine.' ''

Hollywood couldn't find a more accessible religious figure than Moses (voiced by Val Kilmer in the film), the compelling lawgiver and liberator who is a cornerstone of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths. The biblical patriarch has always been a commanding figure in popular culture, popping up again and again in Renaissance art and much later in two spectacularly terrible movies made by Cecil B. DeMille, ``The Ten Commandments'' (1923 and 1956). Each generation seems to imagine him in a different way, a malleability that may help explain Moses' mystique.

``He is a goad, a gadfly and he can be very annoying,'' says religious writer Jonathan Kirsch, whose new book ``Moses: A Life,'' provides a wide-ranging portrait of the Old Testament leader. ``Indeed, the Israelites are shown to be perfectly fed up with him time and again. Even God is sick and tired with Moses at times. But Moses never stops challenging us to choose for ourselves how we want to live.''

DreamWorks' ``The Prince of Egypt'' puts its own spin on Moses, recasting him, in the words of New Yorker critic David Denby, as a ``noisy American teen-ager.'' In the film, Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses are portrayed as brothers whose childhood bond is torn apart when Moses discovers his Jewish roots. The 93-minute movie casts all of its characters - with the exception of the slave masters - in an equally sympathetic light. Never once are the Jews called God's chosen people. God, when heard from, is diminished to an austere, disembodied voice.

``DreamWorks has made the story as bland as possible so no group will be offended,'' Kirsch says. ``That's why they courted all these religious leaders. If the movie had been seen as religiously controversial, they knew the public would see it as a `religious' movie. To avoid that at all costs, they talked to rabbis and ministers as kind of an ersatz marketing research effort.''

DreamWorks officials, including Katzenberg, producers Penny Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins and the studio's religious consultant, Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug, refused to comment for this story.

The response is consistent with problems other news outlets, including Newsweek and the San Diego Union-Tribune, have encountered when trying to write about the film's religious themes. DreamWorks marketing executive Mike Vollman canceled the Union-Tribune's interviews with Katzenberg and other ``Prince of Egypt'' filmmakers when the paper refused to assign an entertainment reporter instead of a religious writer to the story.

``Our reporter was an award-winning staff writer and we assigned her the story because we wanted a unique, interesting piece,'' says the paper's arts editor, Lee Grant. ``After she went to a screening, DreamWorks called and said we had to assign a different writer - an entertainment writer - because they didn't want to give out the impression that the movie was an uplifting, spiritual, religious kind of experience.''

That's certainly the kind of experience religious leaders, at least the ones who were consulted, seem to be having. Baehr, who works for the Christian Film and Television Association in Camarillo, has shown the film on behalf of DreamWorks to numerous church groups and he says the response has typically been quite positive.

``I think it is a beautiful film,'' Baehr says. ``It works as entertainment and it works as theology.''

On a basic level, yes, agrees professor Robert Banks of Pasadena's Fuller Theological Seminary. ``But,'' he adds, ``it's theology on a rather simplistic level, theology that tries to be all things to all people.''

Such inclusive thinking was one of the reasons why Katzenberg and DreamWorks talked to more than 500 religious leaders throughout the various stages of ``The Prince of Egypt.'' David Geffen, who, along with Steven Spielberg, founded DreamWorks, reportedly cautioned Katzenberg early on that the story of Moses was ``not a fairy tale'' and had to be treated with care and respect. For Katzenberg, who made his name in Hollywood with such Disney animated movies as ``The Lion King'' and ``Beauty and the Beast,'' that meant no toy action figures, no Burning Bush night lights and, more significantly, no fast-food tie-ins.

Thus, says movie analyst Rich Ingrassia, when the call went out to religious leaders, DreamWorks was subtly enlisting their support as well as listening to their comments and concerns.

``I think it's a wonderful thing that they wanted input from the three great religions on this story,'' says Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Katzenberg, who is a member of the center's board, asked Hier to organize a meeting with leaders of the three branches of Judaism. Later, when the studio screened ``Prince of Egypt'' for him, Hier came away impressed.

``It's a labor of love, you can see that,'' Hier says. ``I think it will be a very effective film that will have an inter-denominational appeal and will also reach those who don't belong to any particular religion.''

And those are the very people DreamWorks' marketing executives are trying to lure into theaters. Since the toy and fast-food tie-ins were off-limits, the studio has resorted to some creative ploys. Last month, DreamWorks' record label released a heavily hyped set of soundtrack albums - one by Nashville artists, one by gospel stars and a third containing the film's score - designed to make an impression on widely varied audiences. Early sales haven't been good (only the score is in Billboard's Top 100), but will likely pick up once the film arrives in theaters.

Sales have been pretty decent at Wal-Mart, where the giant retailer has been moving ``Prince of Egypt'' gift packages that include a soundtrack compilation, an illustrated children's book, a limited-edition lithograph and two tickets to the film. Jim Tharp, DreamWorks chief of distribution, believes the package is the first of its kind.

``I think you'll find a lot of those packages under Christmas trees, especially in the heartland,'' says Ingrassia, a movie analyst for the investment firm Paul Kagen and Associates.

``Still, I can't help but feel DreamWorks has missed a big opportunity to market the movie more to the religious community. I don't know why Hollywood is so afraid of religion. If you look at the best-seller lists, you'll see a ton of religious titles. It's a subject people are thinking a lot about these days.''

Baehr agrees, saying he recently spoke to a Warner Bros. executive who told him that ``if `The Prince of Egypt' were my movie, I'd be pre-selling tickets in the churches.''

``I passed that along to Jeffrey,'' Baehr says, ``and he kept saying, `No, no, no, no! We don't want churches to presell tickets.' ''

``I think he's making a big mistake,'' Baehr adds, ``but I understand what he's thinking. He wants a bigger audience.''

And, says Hier, there's nothing wrong with that, particularly when the studio is investing more than $100 million of its own money in the finished product.

``This is what studios do,'' Hier says. ``They try to get people into the theaters and they use any means necessary. Why should it be any different with `The Prince of Egypt?' ''

It's a question rooted more in marketing than theology, perhaps an indication of the true essence of DreamWorks' ``The Prince of Egypt.''

``Something is lost when you make biblical stories bland and run away from their theological implications,'' says author Kirsch. ``It sends a message to people not familiar with the Bible that there's nothing interesting in it, which isn't the case at all. It's too bad DreamWorks didn't have more faith in the public.''

Or in the message of its own movie.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `PRINCE OF EGYPT' AWASH IN RELIGIOUS DEBATE

(2) ``The Prince of Egypt'' is the Old Testament story of Moses, who led the Jewish people out of captivity in Egypt.

(3) Moses (the voice of Val Kilmer) seeks his true identity in the hieroglyphics.