Anastasia (1997) Teaser Trailer

This is interesting. It's totally plausible that a short teaser trailer only made for theaters could slip through the cracks.

It could definitely exist, there’s been many instances of early teaser trailers that were lost for a long time and only existed as discussion online (The Goonies, The Thing, The Santa Clause, etc).

It's definitely possible it could be a false memory, but I do have a few (admittedly very anecdotal) reasons I believe it could be real.

One is that I have seen it mentioned online before. Many years ago, back when IMDB still had forums, I remember seeing one thread asking if anyone had remembered a trailer that just basically showed the portrait of Anastasia. Still could be a false memory (or possibly even the same person who posted the thread on reddit) but it's definitely something I remember reading. 

Another is the first teaser trailer for Titan A.E., the other Don Bluth / Fox Animation movie. It premiered before Star Wars Episode I, and was similar in tone to how this Anastasia teaser has been described: A short, relatively cryptic trailer that features no actual character animation. For whatever reason, this teaser was not included on the Titan A. E. DVD, although the 2 later trailers were. Similarly, the Anastasia DVD / Blu-Ray features two long trailers but no short teaser. This could obviously just be me looking too much into a pattern, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Finally, the oldest concrete information I could fine about Anastasia trailers were through old usenet groups. This thread notes that a trailer played before "One Fine Day" in December 1996. It doesn't give much description of the trailer, though I would say it seems more likely it was the easily-found "work in progress" teaser. One person who saw it mentions a "cute dancing dog" and another mentions at least a portion of a song was played.