Move Over Cinderella: Live-Action Stepsisters Spin-Off Takes Center Stage

Disney apparently isn’t done squeezing every last drop from its Cinderella vault. Just when you thought they’d hit all the possible angles—three animated movies, a live-action remake, boatloads of games, books, theme park stuff—now they’re making an entire movie about the stepsisters. Yes, those stepsisters: Anastasia and Drizella, the two who made Cinderella’s life miserable before she hit it big with the whole fairy godmother thing.

Disney Digs Into the Stepsisters

Word’s out (thanks to Deadline) that there’s a live-action film in the works, right now carrying the absolutely on-the-nose working title: Stepsisters. It’s going to dig into the lives of Anastasia and Drizella, the original mean girls of Disney’s 1950 classic. This isn’t a total shocker—pop culture has been remixing and poking fun at the evil stepsister trope for ages, whether in parodies, subversive fairy tales, or outright flips of the original story. But now Disney’s finally throwing its own official crown in the ring.

The Brains Behind the Movie

The team lined up for this is kind of interesting—not your usual princess fare:

• Director: Akiva Schaffer, who recently did Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers for Disney (a surprisingly meta and silly reboot, if you missed it).
• Writers: Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, who co-wrote Rescue Rangers AND the script for the upcoming The Naked Gun reboot, also due out in 2025.
• Producer: Ali Bell via the company Party Over Here.

This new script is actually a re-working of an older screenplay by Micheal Montemayor (yes, of Tangled fame), so there’s been a few hands stirring the pot.

Why Now? The Competition and The Comedy Angle

Here’s a twist. There’s apparently some competition in the ‘stepsisters get their due’ market. A Norwegian movie called The Ugly Stepsister is set for 2025—it’s a satirical, pretty dark comedy/horror with body horror elements (really), and it already grabbed a Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar nomination. Maybe Disney saw the buzz and decided to stake their own spot in the genre—though no way will Disney go full ‘body horror’, obviously.

So what tone are they aiming for? Judging by who’s involved—especially given their previous work—this is likely to be more comedic, probably with a wink and some self-awareness. Whether it’ll poke fun at the usual fairy tale absurdities or really try to redeem the ‘evil sisters’, it’s pretty clear it won’t look much like the 1950s original. It might even manage to become a surprise hit or at least a cult favorite, if the team actually leans into the weirdness.

What We Know (and Don’t Know Yet)

No release date or even a production start date has been announced, but Disney’s making it official that this is on their slate. With access to the full Cinderella mythos and all the Disney Princess gold, odds are this thing gets a big splashy rollout when the time comes.

To sum it up: Disney is finally giving the stepsisters their own movie—with the creative crew behind Rescue Rangers and the new Naked Gun—at a time when the ‘villains deserve a voice’ trend is in full swing. Whether it’s a sly meta-comedy, a gentle rehab of two infamous characters, or something totally unexpected, I’ll keep an eye out for any new info and let you know as soon as we get a title or release window.

‘Disney seems determined to find new ways to revisit their classics—and if this stepsisters movie actually sticks the landing, it could be a new kind of weird, wonderful Cinderella story that nobody’s expecting.’