
DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711210109

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  168 lines

"ANASTASIA" TOUCHING OFF WAR NEW 2OTH CENTURY FOX FILM THREATENS DISNEY'S HOLD ON ANIMATION MARKET

IN ONE CORNER we have Mickey Mouse, the heavyweight champion, backed by a corporate giant that has had the franchise on 'toon flicks dating all the way back to ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.''

In the other corner, we have Bartok, an albino bat, and the Russian princess Anastasia. They are upstarts, but upstarts backed by the newly opened purse strings of 20th Century Fox, complete with a marketing campaign to challenge the Disney veteran.

May the best 'toon win!

It's all-out war as, for the first time, a viable threat to the Disney hold on the animated film market is mounted in the form of ``Anastasia,'' Fox's $60 million flick about a girl who may or may not have been the last of the Romanov dynasty in Russia.

Throwing history off the drawing board, much as Disney did with ``Pocahontas,'' Fox has put in everything but Donald Duck: a lovable doggie named Pooka, a waif-girl who turns into a princess, a touching search for family, a sea storm, a train wreck and an albino bat suitable for stuffing.

It has all the Disney ingredients, but other animated flicks have also had them and not quite amounted to a challenge. Remember ``Charlotte's Web,'' ``An American Tail'' and ``The Land Before Time''? In fact, the highest-grossing non-Disney animated flick was ``Beavis and Butt-head Do America.''

If ``Anastasia'' is a success, it opens the floodgates to the animated market. With $50 million in marketing, including everything from a $30 million tie-in with Burger King to a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, this is all-out war. On the other hand, if it flops, or just does meager business, it's a sign that the Disney brand name for 'toon flicks cannot be challenged. If the latter happens, not only Fox but every other studio in Hollywood is in trouble. They all have expensive animated films in their plans.

DreamWorks is completing construction of a $150 million animation studio in Glendale, Calif., and will release ``Prince of Egypt,'' about the young Moses, next summer. It also has ``Quest for Camelot'' in the works, about a girl who wants to become a knight and seeks the aid of a two-headed dragon. It also plans the action fantasy ``Iron Giant'' for 1999.

Fox has constructed its own animation studio in Phoenix, Ariz., and moved Don Bluth and his entire team from Ireland to take over production. It plans to follow ``Anastasia,'' win or lose, with the adventure film ``Planet Ice'' in 1999.

``The Disney corporation would do anything short of killing in order to stop `Anastasia,' '' Bluth said. ``They're thinking about nothing but money. It's immoral. If Walt were living today, I don't think it would be happening. I don't think there's anything wrong with competition. There is enough market for more than one studio making animated films. A good film will help the market overall.''

Bluth is a Disney rebel. He bolted from the studio more than 15 years ago when Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller (husband of the former Doris Disney) was de-emphasizing animated films and making live-action cheapies.

``I didn't like the way things were going. I wanted the ceiling to be a 10, but the ceiling was just a six,'' Bluth said. ``He ended up with a studio in Ireland and a first feature called ``The Secret of NIMH'' in 1982. The film got good reviews but didn't have Disney-style marketing for its release.

He worked with Steven Spielberg on things like ``An American Tail,'' which was a hit but would have done five times better if it had had ``Walt Disney Presents'' ahead of its title. His last animated film, ``A Troll in Central Park'' (1993) didn't even get a major release.

``We've always been the underdogs,'' Bluth said. ``With `NIMH,' we had `E.T.' as competition. That's all right. We just make the best picture we can.''

He claims that ``some of the things the younger animators at Disney have said about me are quite shocking - and they don't even know me. They weren't there when I was there. Obviously, they're encouraged to belittle our work.''

He claims ``foul'' in the latest Disney tactics.

Disney re-released its 1989 hit ``The Little Mermaid'' last week in an obvious attempt to snag the very audience that might go to ``Anastasia.'' The limited 17-day release means that theaters that book ``Mermaid'' had to keep it through ``Anastasia's'' first weekend. In an all-out blitz, Disney is also releasing a double feature of ``George of the Jungle'' and ``Hercules'' plus its new release ``Flubber,'' starring Robin Williams. To further glut the market, the video ``Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas'' came out Nov. 11.

A Disney executive told Variety magazine that it was just business as usual. ``We re-release our films every seven to eight years,'' he said. ``We've always done that. And when should we release them, if not during the holidays? They should worry more about making their film good and less about our marketing.''

However, Bluth and his Fox would-be competitors claim that Disney has tried to sew up movie screens to limit ``Anastasia's'' release - urging theaters that if they play ``Anastasia,'' they endanger a long-term goodwill deal to get future Disney films. Fox even claims that Disney has urged stores such as Toys R Us to put Anastasia toy products on the back shelf.

The first signs of the tiff came when Disney refused to take ads for ``Anastasia,'' even at a profit of $175,00 for a 30-second spot, on ABC's ``Wonderful World of Disney'' TV show. Fox claimed that, because Disney owns the network, it was a case of unfair monopoly. Disney claimed that it was simply a matter of protecting the brand and that Fox could put its ads elsewhere in ABC programming, just not during the Disney show. Disney felt that an ad for an animated movie during the show would suggest that it was a Disney film.

The 'toon conflict was bound to develop, sooner or later. With profits such as Disney has been making with animated films, the other studios would inevitably get into the fray. Ever since ``The Little Mermaid,'' each Disney animated film has set a new record, with ``Beauty and the Beast'' at $144 million in the United States alone, ``Aladdin'' at $217 million and ``The Lion King'' at $312 million (the fifth-highest grossing film in history).

It was regarded as a disappointment when ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' and ``Hercules'' only took about $100 million each - even though Disney claims that, with merchandising and video, the profits for ``Hunchback'' were $500 million.

Meg Ryan, who is the voice of ``Anastasia,'' laughs at all the hoopla, saying she never suspected the stakes were this high, or perhaps she would have asked for more money. Bluth wooed her by taking her recorded voice from the soundtrack of ``Sleepless in Seattle'' and timing it to an animated little scene he showed her. She was intrigued and took the job.

``John Cusack and I spent a total of about 10 hours working on this film,'' she said. ``I feel a little guilty. Don (Bluth) and the others have been working on it for three years. It's amazing to me how long it takes to make these films.''

Bluth said he was intent upon ``messing up'' the character of Anya a little. The would-be Russian princess, he thought, was a little too pretty in early versions. ``She has an Audrey Hepburn look,'' he said, ``but we messed her hair a bit and intentionally made her clothes not fit. When we got Meg and John together to record, we found a spark that worked.''

Dmitri, the hero, is a former kitchen boy in the Russian palace who helped the Russian princess Anastasia escape. Years later, he promotes a scam to find an imposter and palm her off as the real Anastasia to the dowager empress (voice of Angela Lansbury). But he begins to think that the girl he has found, the orphan Anya, might actually be Anastasia. He also begins to fall in love with her.

Ignoring history, the Bolshevik revolution is ignored, as is the slaughter of Anastasia's family. Her family merely disappears.

Why not Lenin or Marx as the villain?

``Didn't really consider that,'' Bluth said with a laugh. ``We wanted to stay out of politics. We chose Rasputin as our villain.'' He wasn't bothered by the fact that Rasputin would already have been dead at the time this story begins, in 1916.

The idea for Bartok, the albino bat, was Bluth's. ``I just thought the villain had to have a comic sidekick, just to let everyone know that it was all right to laugh,'' he said. ``A bat seemed a natural friend for Rasputin. Making him a white bat came later - just to make him different.''

Bluth was worried, though, about what he calls ``the little boy'' market. He believes that the film has a strike against it because of the title, ``Anastasia.'' He says that Disney's ``Pocahontas'' would have made millions more if it hadn't had a girl's name as the title.

``Little girls open their heart to a movie, but little boys are taught not to show emotions, to be soldiers, to be like their fathers,'' he said. ``They sometimes don't want to go see a movie with a girl's name as the title. We thought about that, a lot. We put in lots of `boy' things, like the train wreck and the storm at sea. The movie has a great deal of action.''

But with all the marketing, the burger tie-ins and three upcoming TV specials, it still lacks one thing - the Disney brand name.

Has the time come that the brand name is no longer needed?

Only the box office figures will reveal the result of the great 'toon wars of 1997. With a Russian princess pitted against a singing mermaid, it's the most bizarre war yet. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

Dimitri...

Photos

20TH CENTURY FOX

A charming con man named Dimitri, right, and an ex-aristocrat named

Vladimir try to convince the peasant girl Anya that she could be the

Princess Anastasia and should let them help her claim her royal

heritage.

The malevolent magician Rasputin schemes with the help of his aide,

Bartok, a white bat, sitting on his beard.