The ABC Sunday Night Movie

The ABC Sunday Night Movie is a television program that aired on Sunday nights, first for a brief time in 1962 under the title Hollywood Special (although Time magazine lists this version as The Sunday Night Movie) to supposedly replace an open time slot for a cancelled TV show, "Bus Stop", which was cancelled after March 1962. It then began airing regularly under its more commonly known title from late 1964 to 1998, on ABC. From 2004 on, it has aired sporadically as a special program, now titled "ABC Sunday Movie of the Week", though as of the 2011-12 television season, the only films in this timeslot are aired under the Hallmark Hall of Fame banner, which transferred to ABC in that season. However, starting with the 2014-15 television season, The Hallmark Hall of Fame is no longer on broadcast television in any form (including ABC) for good. As a result of this, the Sunday Night Movie is now exclusively relegated to 2 special holiday movies, The Sound of Music every holiday season and The Ten Commandments every Easter.

The ABC Sunday Night Movie was replaced in 1998 with The Wonderful World of Disney although the Sunday Night Movie initially continued to air alongside TWWOD for its final season.

Encouraged by the ratings success on NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, ABC initially purchased 15 United Artists films released in the late 1950s for its April 1962 premiere.United Artists Television also provided some short featurettes promoting upcoming United Artists cinema releases to fill out some films that ended before the two hour time slot finished.

The program presented theatrical feature films airing on TV for the first time. The feature films were edited for content, to remove objectionable material, and for time - one such instance was the first network telecast in 1962 of John Huston's 1956 film Moby Dick, a Warner Bros. film which runs 117 minutes uncut, and yet was shown in a two-hour time slot with commercials. In many cases, however, the broadcast was expanded from two to two-and-a-half hours to fit a film's longer running time, as in the two 1966 network telecasts of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (a 1956 film not to be confused with the 1967 videotaped television adaptation of the musical, also broadcast by ABC). The first major network showing of Superman in 1982 was broadcast in two parts with previously unused footage. Extra footage was also added to the ABC broadcast of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1983, Superman II in 1984 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1985.

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