A princess of Russia's Romanov family grows up in an orphanage after the assassination of her parents and separation from her grandmother, with only vague memories of her childhood, but she discovers her rightful heritage when she is recruited to pose as the lost princess by con men who want to claim a reward for her recovery.
This film was the first work by Bluth, a prominent LDS director of animated films, for Twentieth-Century Fox, after many years as at his own independent company in Dublin. It was critically and commercially much better received than his recent films made in the early 1990s; he created a spin-off on the comic bat character Bartok ("Bartok the Magnificent"), and many hoped the film marked a return to the form of his 1980s work. Most agree, however, that such hope has not been fulfilled.
Anastasia is based on the play by Marcelle Maurette, as adapted by Guy Bolton, and the screenplay by Arthur Laurents.