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A Night at the Movies: The Gigantic World of Epics

With spectacular images parading across the screen and stories from the greatest literary and historical sources of all time, epics have been a staple of cinema since its earliest days. Turner Classic Movies is devoting the second of its ongoing series of one-hour A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES specials to THE GIGANTIC WORLD OF EPICS, premiering Sunday, Dec. 20, at 8 p.m. (ET). The special will premiere as part of a 24-hour salute to epics that will include such films as Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ben-Hur (1959) and the 1927 and 1961 versions of King of Kings.

A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES is an all-new collection of one-hour specials that provide a Film Studies 101 look at top cinematic genres. In October, TCM premiered THE SUSPENSEFUL WORLD OF THRILLERS to great critical acclaim. The special aired as part of a month-long festival of classic chillers. Future installments will include looks at other genres, from horror films to comedies to romantic dramas. The specials come to TCM from DreamWorks Television, with Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey (Las Vegas, TNT's Into the West) serving as executive producers. THE GIGANTIC WORLD OF EPICS was written, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and author Laurent Bouzereau, who also helmed TCM's October special on thrillers.

A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: THE GIGANTIC WORLD OF EPICS will look at Hollywood's biggest screen spectaculars from all sides, including the genre's beginnings, literary adaptations, great epic directors and actors, the challenges of making big-budget movies, classic set-pieces and epic music scores. The special also looks at how the genre fell out of favor with audiences and filmmakers in the '70s and '80s, only to be reborn with more recent films like Gladiator, Dances with Wolves, Braveheart and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Throughout, the special is packed with classic scenes and behind-the-scenes images from such films as The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Samson & Delilah, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, El Cid and King of Kings.

The special will feature interviews with such figures as TCM host Robert Osborne; filmmakers Jean-Jacques Annaud (Quest for Fire), Kenneth Branagh (Henry V), Jeffrey Katzenberg (Prince of Egypt), John Milius (The Wind and the Lion), and Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan); author Kenneth Follett (Pillars of the Earth); actors Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia) and Martin Landau (Cleopatra); stuntmen Loren James (The Ten Commandments) and Diamond Farnsworth (Pearl Harbor); production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas (Elizabeth: The Golden Age); assistant director Michael Stevenson (Doctor Zhivago); film historians Gary Allen Smith, Melvyn Stokes and Rudy Behlmer; and biographer Natasha Fraser Cavasoni. Also included are reminiscences from director Fraser Heston, son of Charlton Heston; Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of epic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille; William Bronston, son of producer Samuel Bronston; and Nina Mann, daughter of director Anthony Mann.