Steps Flips Cinderella: Meet the Reimagined Stepsisters

What if the villains you thought you knew were the ones asking the hardest questions? Netflix dropped a fresh batch of concept art from Steps at the Annecy festival, and the image it paints is less fairy-tale villainy and more messy, human ambition.

The film pivots the camera away from Cinderella and trains it on her stepsisters—Lilith and Margo—two figures long relegated to caricature. Here they have appetites, grudges, and a strange, stubborn dignity. The voice cast reads like a dream for animation fans: Ali Wong, Stephanie Hsu, Bette Midler and Amanda Seyfried breathe life into this new take, and the filmmakers behind the project bring seasoned hands and bold ideas to the table.

Steps turns the Cinderella tale inside out, centering the once-forgotten stepsisters.

The plot sparks with a theft: Lilith snatches the fairy godmother’s wand, then crashes the royal ball and upends expectations across the kingdom. Chaos follows, but not the tidy kind; an opportunistic villain who craves power compounds the mess, forcing unlikely alliances. When disaster threatens to swell beyond control, Lilith finds herself face-to-face with Cinderella—no glass slipper, just hard choices and an uneasy truce.

That uneasy truce becomes the emotional core. Adventure and comedy are on the surface, but at its center Steps asks about identity, belonging and the strange gravity of sisterhood. It’s not merely a retelling; it’s an excavation. Who gets to tell a story, and who gets left standing in the margins?

Visually, the movie promises a hybrid: the warm textures and romance of classic fairy tales filtered through a punchy, modern visual language—color palettes that pop, silhouettes that move like jazz. The concept art shown at Annecy hints at a world that feels familiar and unexpectedly new at the same time.

Mark your calendars: Steps arrives on Netflix on November 20. Expect a film that wants to be playful and sharp at once—an animated piece that nudges a beloved myth until its seams show, then finds something honest underneath.