Anastasia (1997 film)

In May 1994, The Los Angeles Times reported that Don Bluth and Gary Goldman had signed a long-term deal to produce animated features with 20th Century Fox with the studio channeling more than $100 million in constructing the animation studio.[8] They selected Phoenix, Arizona, for the location of the new animation studio because the state offered the company about $1 million in job training funds and low-interest loans for the state-of-the-art digital animation equipment,[9] with a staff of 300 artists and technicians, a third of whom worked with Bluth and Goldman in Dublin, Ireland, for Sullivan Bluth Studios.[10] For their first project, the studio insisted they select one out of a dozen existing properties which they owned where Bluth and Goldman suggested adapting The King and I and My Fair Lady,[11] though Bluth and Goldman felt it would be impossible to improve on Audrey Hepburn's performance and Lerner and Loewe's score. Following several story suggestions, the idea to adapt Anastasia originated from Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Bill Mechanic. They would later adapt story elements from Pygmalion with the peasant Anya being molded into a regal woman.[12]

Early into production, Bluth and Goldman began researching the actual events through enlisting former CIA agents stationed in Moscow and St. Petersburg.[13] Around this same time, screenwriter Eric Tuchman had written a script that co-screenwriter Bruce Graham described as being "very adult, very based in reality, all about politics, and without any magic or comedy". Eventually, Bluth and Goldman decided the history of Anastasia and the Romanov dynasty was too dark for their film.[12] In 1995, Graham and Susan Gauthier reworked Tuchman's script into a light-hearted romantic comedy. When Graham and Gauthier moved onto other projects, husband-and-wife screenwriting team Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired for additional rewrites.[14] Actress Carrie Fisher also made uncredited rewrites of the film, particularly the scene in which Anya leaves the orphanage for Paris.[15]

For the villains, Bluth also did not take into consideration depicting Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and initially toyed with the idea of a police chief with a vendetta against Anastasia. Instead, they decided to have Grigori Rasputin as the villain with Goldman explaining it was because of "all the different things they did to try to destroy Rasputin and what a horrible man he really was, the more it seemed appetizing to make him the villain".[13] In reality, Rasputin was already dead when the Romanovs were assassinated. In addition to this, Bluth created the idea for Bartok, the albino bat, as a sidekick for Rasputin. "I just thought the villain had to have a comic sidekick, just to let everyone know that it was all right to laugh. A bat seemed a natural friend for Rasputin. Making him a white bat came later - just to make him different."[16] Composers Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens recalled being at Au Bon Pain in New York City where Rasputin and Bartok were pitched, and being dismayed at the decision to go down a historically inaccurate route; they made their stage musical adaption "more sophisticated, more far-reaching, more political" to encompass their original vision.[17]

Bluth stated that Meg Ryan was his first and only choice for the title character. However, Ryan was indecisive about accepting the role due to its dark historical events.[18] To persuade her, the animation team took an audio clip of Annie Reed from Sleepless in Seattle and created an animation reel based on it which was screened for her following an invitation to the studio. "I was blown away that they did that", Ryan later confessed, and accepted the role.[19] Before Ryan was cast, Broadway singer and actress Liz Callaway was brought in to record several demos of the songs hoping to land a job in background vocals, but were liked well enough by the songwriters that were ultimately used in the final film.[20] Cusack openly admitted after being cast that he couldn't sing,[21] in which his singing duties were performed by Jonathan Dokuchitz.[22] Goldman had commented that originally, as with the rest of the cast, they were going to have Ryan record her lines separately from the others, with Bluth reading the lines of the other characters to her. However, after Ryan and the directors were finding the method to be too challenging when her character was paired with Dimitri, she and Cusack recorded the dialogue of their characters together, with Goldman noting “It made a huge difference.”[13]

Peter O'Toole was considered for the role of Rasputin, but Christopher Lloyd was hired because of his popularity from the Back to the Future trilogy. Bartok was initially written for Woody Allen, but the studio was reluctant to hire him following revelations of his relationship with his ex-partner Mia Farrow's adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Martin Short was also considered, but Hank Azaria won the role ten minutes into his audition.[13][14]

The film score was composed, co-orchestrated, and conducted by David Newman, whose father, Alfred Newman, composed the score of the 1956 film of the same name.[23] The songs, of which "Journey to the Past" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, were written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.[24] The first song they wrote for the project was "Once Upon a December"; it was written during a heatwave "so [they were] sweating and writing winter imagery".[17] The film's soundtrack was released in CD and audio cassette format on October 28, 1997.[25]

Anastasia was accompanied with a marketing campaign at more than $50 million with promotional sponsors from Burger King, Dole Food Company, Hershey, Chesebrough-Ponds, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Shell Oil, and the 1997 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Overall, the marketing costs exceeded that of Independence Day by more than 35 percent.[29] For merchandising, Fox selected Galoob to license dolls based on Anastasia.[28] Many storybooks adapted from the film were released by Little Golden Books. In August 1997, the SeaWorld theme parks in San Diego and Orlando featured a 40-foot-long, 20-foot-high inflatable playground for children called "Anastasia's Kingdom".[30]

On April 28, 1998 and January 1, 1999, Anastasia was released on VHS, laserdisc and DVD and sold eight million units.[31] On March 14, 2006, the film was reissued on a two-disc "Family Fun Edition" DVD with the film in its original theatrical 2.35:1 widescreen format. The first disc contained the film, an optional audio commentary from directors/writers Bluth and Goldman, and bonus features. The second contained a making-of documentary, music video and making-of featurette of Aaliyah's "Journey to the Past", and additional bonus content.[32] The film was released on Blu-ray on March 22, 2011; this came with Bartok the Magnificent in the special features.[33]

Anastasia was available to stream on Disney+ when the service launched on November 12, 2019 following The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of 20th Century Studios.[34]

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 85% based on 54 reviews and an average rating of 7.12/10. The website's consensus reads, "Beautiful animation, an affable take on Russian history, and strong voice performances make Anastasia a winning first film from Fox Animation Studios."[35] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, writing, "The result is entertaining and sometimes exciting".[36] The Cincinnati Enquirer described Anastasia as "charming" and "entertaining", concluding, "Anastasia serves up a tasty tale about a fairy-tale princess".[37] Lisa Osbourne of Boxoffice called the film "pure family entertainment."[38] Awarding the film three out of five stars, Empire's Philip Thomas wrote, "Historical inaccuracies aside, Anastasia manages to be a charming little movie".[39]

Several critics have drawn positive comparisons between Anastasia and the Disney films released during the Disney Renaissance, noting similarities in their story and animation styles. Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle awarded the film three out of five stars. Likening its quality to that of a Disney animated film, Baumgarten wrote that Anastasia "may not beat Disney at its own game, but it sure won't be for lack of trying". Baumgarten continued, "[t]his sumptuous-looking film clearly spared no expense in its visual rendering; its optical flourishes and attention to detail aim for the Disney gold standard and, for the most part, come pretty darn close".[40] The Phoenix's Jeffrey Gantz jokingly stated, "[i]f imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then the folks at Disney should feel royally complimented by Twentieth Century Fox's new animated feature about Tsar Nicholas II's youngest daughter."[41] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Fox's challenge to the Disney empire is a beautifully animated musical". However, Gleiberman continued, "Anastasia has the Disney house style down cold, yet the magic is missing."[42]

Critical reception in Russia was also, for the most part, positive despite the artistic liberties that the film took with Russian history. Gemini Films, the Russian distributor of Anastasia, stressed the fact that the story was "not history", but rather "a fairy tale set against the background of real Russian events" in the film's Russian marketing campaign so that its Russian audience would not view Anastasia "as a historical film".[43] As a result, many Russians praised the film for its art and storytelling and saw it as "not so much a piece of history but another Western import to be consumed and enjoyed".[43]

Some Russian Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, found Anastasia to be an offensive depiction of the Grand Duchess, who was canonized as a new martyr in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.[44] Many historians echoed their sentiments, criticizing the film as a "sanitized, sugar-coated reworking of the story of the Czar's youngest daughter."[45] While the filmmakers acknowledged the fact that "Anastasia uses history only as a starting point", others complained that the film would provide its audience with misleading facts about Russian history, which, according to the author and historian Suzanne Massie, "has been falsified for so many years".[46] Similarly, the amateur historian Bob Atchison said that Anastasia was akin to someone making a film in which Anne Frank "moves to Orlando and opens a crocodile farm with a guy named Mort".[46]

Some of Anastasia's contemporary relatives also felt that the film was distasteful, but most Romanovs have come to accept the "repeated exploitation of Anastasia's romantic tale...with equanimity".[46]

A limited release of Anastasia at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on the weekend of November 14, 1997, grossed $120,541.[47] The following week, the wide release of Anastasia in the United States made $14.1 million (for an average of about $5,692 from 2,478 theaters), which placed it as the #2 film for the weekend of November 21–23, 1997. By the end of its theatrical run, Anastasia had grossed $58.4 million in the North American box office and $81.4 million internationally.[2] The worldwide gross totaled up to about $139.8 million, making it Don Bluth's highest-grossing film to date and beating out his next highest-grossing film, An American Tail, by about $55 million.[48] This was Don Bluth's first financially successful film since All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Anastasia On Ice was a licensed adaptation produced by Feld Entertainment's on ice unit that ran from at least 1998 to 1999.[49][50]

In 1999 a direct-to-video spin-off and prequel called Bartok the Magnificent was released which focused on the character of Bartok.[51]

On April 21, 2015, Hartford Stage, Hartford, Connecticut, announced that they will premiere a new stage production of Anastasia, with the book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty and directed by Darko Tresnjak.[52] The production ran from May 13 through June 19, 2016.[53]

It is an original new musical combining both the 1956 Fox film and the 1997 animated film. According to Tresnjak, the musical features six songs from the animated movie and additionally includes 16 new songs. Additionally, there have been some newly rewritten characters including Checkist secret Police officer Gleb Vaganov (in the place of Rasputin), and Lily, who has been renamed in the place of Sophie.[54] McNally said "This is a stage version for a modern theatre audience...The libretto's 'a blend' of old and new...There are characters in the musical that appear in neither the cartoon nor the Ingrid Bergman version."[55]

The Hartford production featured Christy Altomare as Anastasia/Anya, Derek Klena as Dimitri, Mary Beth Peil as The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Manoel Felciano as Gleb Vaganov, John Bolton as Vladimir, Caroline O'Connor as Lily, and Nicole Scimeca as Young Anastasia.[56] The musical transferred to Broadway with much of the original Hartford cast, opening on April 24, 2017, at the Broadhurst Theater[57] to mixed reviews.