Nearly 80 years after a Disney movie brought the story into its most famous form, one classic tale is set to see itself change once again in the modern day. Modern retellings of classic stories are a trend that is likely to live on eternally, thanks to the continual success this approach has seen throughout the decades, and since there are some stories that are almost universally known and thus primed for this kind of revival.
Of course, folk tales and fairy tales tend to be the most common stories to get this treatment, since a vast number of adults are taught them as children, and thus they stay in the cultural consciousness for many, many generations. This has been doubly true after the rise of Disney, since the company was founded on some immensely famous adaptations of stories like Snow White or Beauty and the Beast that are still majorly famous movies to this day.
That said, the more famous a story is, the more likely it is that different takes on or versions of it will emerge later down the line. As such, it’s perhaps par for the course that 2026 will be bringing us another rendition of one of the most famous Disney classic movie stories of all time – but not from Disney themselves.
2026 Will See The Story Of Cinderella Imagined In Movie Form Once More
Netflix is scheduled to release a new story that reimagines the classic fairytale of Cinderella in the form of Steps, an animated movie set to release in 2026 as the first film to be fully produced in-house within Netflix Animation Studios.
Steps, as the name suggests, allows the story of Cinderella to focus more on Cinderella’s stepsisters, as this revamp of the story sees stepsisters Lilith and Margot steal the Fairy Godmother’s wand and sabotage the Royal Ball where Cinderella conventionally meets her match with the Prince, rewriting history so their kingdom is instead doomed to be overseen by a new tyrannical ruler.
This leaves Lilith and Cinderella forced to team up in order to set things right, establishing a decidedly different story, but one that allows the two to reconcile and perhaps form a better relationship than the one we see in the classic fairytale and in the iconic Disney movie adaptation.
Why Cinderella Has Been Reimagined In Movies So Many Times Over The Years
Interestingly, Cinderella is one of the most commonly reimagined classic stories of all time, being up there with Alice in Wonderland in terms of how many times we’ve seen different versions of the tale, especially in the world of shows and movies, wherein Cinderella has often more recently been reimagined in horror movie form, as can be seen in 2006’s Cinderella, and 2025’s The Ugly Stepsister.
A huge part of this is no doubt how recognizable the story is, given the Disney animated movie remains one of the most lastingly famous films of all time, and has some easily recognizable iconography and characters that are easy to utilize. Similarly, the fact we learn very little about figures like the stepsisters means there’s ample room for reimaginings to fill in the blanks in a way that can drastically alter the overall story while keeping true to much of the original.
Indeed, given the Disney Cinderella movie most know the story from is now almost 80 – and the original Brothers Grimm version of the folk tale is itself over two hundred years old – it’s fair to say that enough time has passed that it’s worth approaching the story from some more different perspectives in order to see how it can work in different lights, which Steps certainly looks set to do when the Netflix Cinderella movie releases later this year.