How Disney Successfully Prevented Anastasia’s Success
Don Bluth Productions was meant to directly challenge Disney. Perhaps feeling that The Mouse had been at the top of the animation heap for too long, Bluth actively sought to unseat their dominance, or, at the very least, offer some legitimate challenges to their deathlike grip on the popular imagination. While the studio’s first production, “The Secret of NIMH,” was only a modest hit, it eventually become a cult favorite, offering a slightly edgier tone and some scarier imagery than your average Disney animated flick. Don Bluth Productions had to shutter shortly after “NIMH,” but Bluth, undeterred innovated several notable animation projects — the animated sequence in “Xanadu,” and the video games “Dragon’s Lair” and “Space Ace” — before opening Sullivan Bluth Studios in 1985.
From there, Bluth pushed the envelope with a series of hit animated films as listed in the parentheses above. It helped that Steven Spielberg’s Amblin studios was behind “An American Tail” as well. “Tail” had the highest-grossing opening of any first-release animated film. It certainly seemed that Bluth was making good on his promise to confront Disney. It helped him that Disney was struggling throughout the 1980s, releasing the enormous flop “The Black Cauldron” the year before. “The Black Cauldron” was such a bomb, there was scuttlebutt in the industry that Disney would shutter their animation department altogether.
Animation in the 1990s
Based very, very loosely on actual Russian history, Bluth’s version of “Anastasia” is about the lost princess Anya Romanov (Meg Ryan) who was presumed killed when the Bolsheviks came into power. The Bolsheviks were able to take over Russia, according to the film, due to the aid of Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd), an evil sorcerer who had managed to cast a spell of immortality on himself. Years later, the adult Anya falls in with a grifter and former servant to the Romanovs named Dimitri (John Cusack), who aims to re-install Anya on the throne. Hank Azaria played Bartok, Rasputin’s anthropomorphic bat, and the cast boasted Bernadette Peters, Angela Lansbury, and Kelsey Grammar. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty wrote the film’s amazing songs, with their “Journey to the Past” eventually being nominated for an Academy Award. “In the Dark of the Night,” too, is awesome.
Disney gonna Disney
“Anastasia” was scheduled for release in November of 1997, and it was — to my personal recollection — a big, big deal. There were articles published about how “Anastasia” was poised to overtake Disney, and how Bluth was, once again, going to reassert a sense of variety into the current animated marketplace. The film had fast food tie-ins, a massive ad campaign, was selling soundtrack records in advance of the film’s release … it was nearly as ubiquitous as a Disney film.
Disney, however, has a long memory, and the animosity that Bluth felt toward the company was, it turns out, entirely mutual. One can only speculate which executive at Disney decided to launch a counterinsurgency against “Anastasia,” or how such a blitzkrieg was worded, or how vitriolic Disney was intentionally trying to be, but we do know that Disney did not want “Anastasia” to succeed. Ads for the film, for instance, were banned on “The Wonderful World of Disney.” Disney had little recourse to stop “Anastasia,” however. Their brand was being challenged. Their own animated feature “Hercules” had already been released the previous February and wasn’t a threat to “Anastasia,” and with DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” on the horizon, Disney needed to win this “fight.” While “Anastasia” was building up steam in the popular consciousness, Disney whipped out their ace in the hole, which was, it turns out, the exact same film that they used to reassert their dominance over Bluth in 1989: “The Little Mermaid.” In a massive act of programming spite, Disney elected to re-release “The Little Mermaid” on the exact same day as “Anastasia.”
Disney, however, has a long memory, and the animosity that Bluth felt toward the company was, it turns out, entirely mutual. One can only speculate which executive at Disney decided to launch a counterinsurgency against “Anastasia,” or how such a blitzkrieg was worded, or how vitriolic Disney was intentionally trying to be, but we do know that Disney did not want “Anastasia” to succeed. Ads for the film, for instance, were banned on “The Wonderful World of Disney.”
Disney had little recourse to stop “Anastasia,” however. Their brand was being challenged. Their own animated feature “Hercules” had already been released the previous February and wasn’t a threat to “Anastasia,” and with DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” on the horizon, Disney needed to win this “fight.” While “Anastasia” was building up steam in the popular consciousness, Disney whipped out their ace in the hole, which was, it turns out, the exact same film that they used to reassert their dominance over Bluth in 1989: “The Little Mermaid.” In a massive act of programming spite, Disney elected to re-release “The Little Mermaid” on the exact same day as “Anastasia.”
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
New Line Cinema
“Anastasia” has been removed from Disney+ in the U.S. due to a labyrinthine, pre-existing licensing deal. The movie is still streaming on Disney+ in other countries. It will be Starz in the U.S. starting March 18. The film they hobbled on purpose, then bought, then threw away, is now available elsewhere. I encourage readers to seek out “Anastasia” on its current home of Hoopla. Remember the glorious ambition of a film so threatening to Disney, they had to attack it personally.
Disney is currently swallowing its own tail by remaking its own animated films in live-action or CGI. Don Bluth hasn’t made a film since “Titan A.E.”
