While most eyes will be on the countless Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh horror movies, Cinderella is slowly sneaking up on them with news of The Ugly Stepsister.
In the wake of the recently released Cinderella’s Revenge and the upcoming Cinderella’s Curse, Variety exclusively revealed Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister, a Cinderella comedy horror movie from the perspective of, you guessed it, one of Cinderella’s stepsisters.
The Ugly Stepsister Details on Comedy Horror Movie
The gory film follows Elvira as she battles to compete with her insanely beautiful stepsister in a kingdom where beauty is a brutal business. She will go to any lengths to catch the prince’s eye.
Speaking to Variety, Blichfeldt revealed she “immediately identified” with the stepsister after “rediscovering the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella in which the stepsister cuts off her toes to make the shoe fit.”
“With this ‘beauty horror’ I want to seduce the audience into a “girl-dreaming-of-marrying-the-prince-fairytale”, before revealing its true and raw insides,” said the director. “it’s time the ugly stepsister’s story is lifted from the shadows of Cinderella, and cultivated as the iconic feminist narrative of the tyranny of beauty that it is.”
The Ugly Stepsister is produced by Maria Ekerhovd in Norway for Mer Film (The Innocents, Sentimental Value), and is co-produced by Lizette Jonjic for Zentropa Sweden (Another Round), Mariusz Włodarski for Poland’s Lava Films (The Girl With The Needle), Theis Nørgaard for Denmark’s Motor (The Dead Don’t Hurt), Zefyr and Film i Väst.
With support from the Norwegian Film Institute, the Polish Cash Rebate and the Polish Film Institute, the Swedish Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, Eurimages, DR, Nordisk Film & Tv Fond. Scanbox will release the film across Scandinavian countries.
The Ugly Stepsister stars Lea Myren, who makes her acting feature debut as Elvira. Alongside her will be Thea Sofie Loch Naess (“The Last Kingdom”) and Ane Dahl Torp (“The Wave”).
