It is a rite-of-passage saga fit for a cartoon classic. Plucky kids dream of breathless adventures in a rainbow kingdom. They will be animators, spin magical musical tales for children of all ages and make pots of money in video and burger tie-ins. But standing guard before the cartoon castle is the evil Cruella Di Sney. "The animated-feature franchise is mine, all mine!" she thunders. "Nobody does it better, and nobody better try."
Will the daring insurgents storm the castle and free the people from the tyrant's cloying clutches? Or will they discover that, gee, the people really like Di Sney's style and don't care to be rescued?
We'll find out next week, when Anastasia, the winsome, often winning debut film from Fox Animation Studios, arrives on screens nationwide. Directed by Disney renegades Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven), this fanciful story about the lost princess of the Romanovs has all the elements for a cartoon hit: a girl-becomes-a-woman plot; a chipper, Alan Menkenish score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once on This Island, Ragtime); and a cute, chatty bat. Close your ears to the Fox fanfare in the opening moments, and you can mistake it for a Disney film. Which is exactly what Fox hopes parents will do.
There's no mistaking Hollywood's sudden urge to outfox the mouse. Anastasia is the first in a salvo of all-animated features from three deep-pocketed Disney rivals: Fox, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks SKG. The next few years will see the biggest splurge of cartoon features ever. But after the exclamation point come the question marks. Are there ways to make popular animated films that don't slavishly follow the rules Walt and the boys made up in the 1930s? Are studios jumping on the toon trolley just as the form has shown signs of losing its commercial luster? "I'm a little uncertain," says Chuck Jones, who joined Warner's in 1935 and today, at 85, is the greatest living animation director. "There are so many films in the works now that the market may soon be oversaturated."
Anastasia, which cost about $53 million, is getting a blast of promotion equal to that given any Disney cartoon--and 35% more marketing support than Fox lavished on last year's smash Independence Day. With such a price tag, a studio boss gets to hope out loud. "I'd like it to be, at a minimum, the most successful non-Disney animated film," says Fox filmed-entertainment chief Bill Mechanic, probably alluding to the $90 million earned at the box office by Warner's 1996 Space Jam. "But I really hope it will compete with the best Disney pictures." Best as in biggest: The Lion King's $313 million.
So do other studio heads, who can be stirred to animation animus when they shiver in the shadow of the cartoon colossus. "We're rooting for Anastasia," says Bob Daly, Warner Bros. and Warner Music Group chairman and co-CEO. "It would be great for the entire industry if a non-Disney animated film became a real hit."