- Title: USA: 20TH CENTURY FOX RELEASES ITS FIRST FULL LENGTH ANIMATED FEATURE "ANASTASIA"
- Date: 30th October 1997
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 30, 1997) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) JODI BENSON SAYING (ON COMPETITION WITH "ANASTASIA"), "I HAVE FRIENDS THAT WORK ON "ANASTASIA," I HAVE NOT SEEN IT, I'VE SEEN A COUPLE CLIPS, IT LOOKS WONDERFUL, I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO GOING TO SEE IT, YOU KNOW, THEY'RE COMING OUT AT THE SAME TIME, IT'S HOLIDAY RELEASE TIME, THE WAY I'M TRYING TO FEEL ABOUT IS THAT, THE MORE FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT THE BETTER. THE MORE MOVIES THERE ARE FOR EVERYBODY TO GO TO AS A FAMILY THE BETTER, I JUST THINK IT'S GREAT. I THINK THERE'S AN AUDIENCE FOR BOTH FILMS, BOTH MARKETS." (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) BUDDY HACKETT SAYING, "I KNOW THAT IF YOU DO SOMETHING FOR DISNEY, IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE THERE. DISNEY, IT NEVER STOPS, IT GOES...THEY MAKE IT SO, FIRST THING THEY PUT....IT'S NOT SET IN A TIME FRAME, IT'S FOREVER."
- Embargoed: 14th November 1997 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA/ FILM lOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA9NUW04NBYW9UBWZ1UT7ILH1LW
- Story Text: - 20th Century Fox released its first full length animated feature - "Anastasia" - on Saturday (November 21) striding into movie-making territory usually inhabited by Walt Disney alone.
But Disney fought back, undermining "Anastasia"'s box office draw with the re-release of its old favourite "The Little Mermaid".
One week before "Anastasia" hit the family film market, Walt Disney re-released its animated classic "The Little Mermaid" in theatres for a limited two-week run.
When first released in 1989, "The Little Mermaid" was a hit with parents and children alike. It marked Disney's 28th full-length animated feature and swam off with two Oscars - one for Best Song for "Under the Sea" and another for Best Score.
For its re-release, "The Little Mermaid" has been restored to look and sound better than it did during its initial release.
Disney hopes to lure young and old viewers back to the cinema to see the film, despite the fact it has been available on video for a number of years.
The film features Jodi Benson as Ariel, the mermaid who longs to be human, Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian, her Calypso crab companion, and veteran comic Buddy Hackett as Scuttle, a squawking and slightly dim-witted seagull.
The film marked the dawn of what has come to be called the second "golden age" of Disney animation. It was followed by such hits as "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas." But recently, Disney's animation star has started to fade, with its last two features, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Hercules" failing to earn as much money as their predecessors.
At the same time, other Hollywood studios have started making inroads into feature animation - an arena once reserved for Disney alone.
Warner Brothers and Dreamworks are forging ahead with feature animation projects. Dreamworks co-founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, was credited with revitalizing the art of animation during his tenure in charge of Walt Disney Studios. It was under his guidance that "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" were launched.
Fox has recently invested millions of dollars in a state-of-the-art animation facility in Phoenix, Arizona which produced its first animated feature - "Anastasia." The film had its Los Angeles premiere on Saturday (November 15).
"Anastasia" is based on the story of the long-lost Russian princess Anastasia, believed to be the last living descendant of the Romanov family. When the Tsar and his family were executed during the Russian Revolution, the little girl went missing and, despite rumours of her existence, she was never seen again.
Of course, this version of the story is highly-fictionalised, and comes complete with a wicked villain named Rasputin, a love interest named Dimitri and a talking albino bat named Bartok.
Meg Ryan provides the voice of Anastasia, while John Cusack is Dimitri, the palace kitchen boy who grows up to become a con artist trying to pass a Russian girl off as the lost princess. He and his companion Vladimir, voiced by television's Kelsey Grammer, take the young Anya into their care.
"Anastasia" marks the return of animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, who met in 1972 when they both worked at Walt Disney Studios.
Bluth worked on Disney projects such as "Robin Hood," "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too," and "The Rescuers." In 1979, both men resigned from Disney to start their own production company and subsequently created "The Secret of NIMH," "An American Tail," "The Land Before Time" and "All Dogs Go to Heaven." "Anastasia" is the debut production for Bluth and Goldman as employees of the Fox Animation Studios.
The film is the culmination of three years of planning and production during which Bluth and Goldman led a team of 390 artists from around the world.
Over the production phase of the film, more than three million individual computer files were compiled including 350 thousand animation drawings, as well as layouts and backgrounds painted by hand for 1,350 individual scenes.
The songs in the film were written by the songwriting team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who wrote the songs and score to the new Broadway musical "Ragtime." "Anastasia" is just one of the animated features challenging Disney's status as the leading Hollywood player in feature animation. Dreamworks and Warner Brothers are both preparing major animated features to be released in 1998. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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