Anastasia was the first feature from Fox's own animation division
Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Anastasia turned the lost Romanov grand duchess into an amnesiac orphan in an alternate 1926, chasing her past to Paris. Some historians objected to the fantasy, but the film grossed $140 million worldwide, the most profitable result Bluth and Fox Animation Studios ever achieved.
Released in 1997, the film was the first animated feature 20th Century Fox made through its own division, working via the subsidiary Fox Animation Studios. It premiered at New York's Ziegfeld Theater on November 14, 1997, a week before its general US release on November 21. Two writing teams built the screenplay from a story adaptation by Eric Tuchman, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens made their debut as film songwriters, and David Newman composed and conducted the score.
The story opens in 1916 in Saint Petersburg, where Dowager Empress Marie gives her youngest granddaughter a music box and a necklace promising a reunion in Paris. The exiled Rasputin, having bartered his soul for the power to destroy the Romanovs, uses a cursed reliquary to ignite revolution. During the escape Anastasia is separated from her grandmother, strikes her head and loses her memory.
A decade later, with Marie offering 10 million rubles for her granddaughter's return, the conman Dimitri and the former nobleman Vlad hunt for a convincing lookalike and stumble upon Anya, the genuine grand duchess, who has no idea who she is. Their trip to Paris, dodging Rasputin's demons along the way, ends when the music box's lullaby unlocks her memories, and Dimitri is revealed as the servant boy who once helped the royals flee.
Meg Ryan voices Anya, and Angela Lansbury and Kirsten Dunst are among the supporting cast. Critics admired the animation, the voices and the songs, and at the 70th Academy Awards the film was nominated for its score and for the song Journey to the Past. It went on to seed a franchise, including a 1999 spin-off that skipped cinemas for home video and, in 2016, a version for the theatre.
Source: Anastasia (1997 film)
