It's became a bit of a tradition leading up to the Easter holidays each year: the annual airing of The Ten Commandments airing on primetime TV. The 1956 Cecil B. DeMille-directed religious epic—which stars Charles Heston as Moses, the prophet who led the Exodus of the Hebrew people out of Egypt and across the Red Sea to freedom—will be broadcast tonight at 7pm Eastern Time on ABC.
The enduring biblical drama—which also features Yul Brynner as Rameses and Anne Baxter as Nefretiri—has aired annually on U.S. network television over the Easter/Passover season for more than five decades. Since 2006, ABC has been broadcasting The Ten Commandments on the Saturday night prior to Easter Sunday, though this year, the network is showing the classic film a week early, on the first night of Passover 2025.
The final directorial effort of the iconic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille before his death in 1959, The Ten Commandments is widely considered a masterpiece, lauded for its stunning Technicolor visual and its extravagant retelling of the Bible story. (It was nominated for a whopping seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and took home the awards for Best Visual Effects. It was also a staggering commercial success: it grossed $122.7 million at the box office during its initial release, and remember, this was all the way back in the 1950s.
The Ten Commandments will be shown in its nearly-four-hour entirety tonight on ABC beginning at 7pm ET. To tune in, a traditional cable subscription automatically includes the channel, while a TV antenna allows you to receive your local ABC station for free. If you’re looking for a way to watch the legendary film without a cable plan, you can use live TV streaming services to stream channels over the internet. ABC is available on Fubo, DirecTV Stream, Hulu with Live TV or YouTube TV, and you can find prices for the various services below.
And if you want to keep the biblical theme going during the springtime holy season, check out our watch list of the top Passion of Christ films.
Check out the trailer from the majestic motion picture before tuning into The Ten Commandments tonight, April 12, on ABC.
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