Cinderella’s Revenge movie storyline. Cinderella is pushed too far by her evil stepsisters and stepmother, which causes her to switch out her glass shoes and use the assistance of her Fairy Godmother to seek bloody vengeance.
Following in the blood-soaked footsteps of last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, Cinderella’s Revenge (out April 26) takes a beloved-by-children character and reframes their story in an appropriate-only-for-adults fashion, as you can see in EW’s exclusive trailer reveal.
Brit director Andy Edwards describes his film as a retelling of the story that everybody knows, up to a point. “We have Cinderella, we have the evil stepmother, we have the two evil sisters, and they treat her pretty badly,” he explains. “But there’s a few twists in it and a few surprises. There’s sex and violence, as well, which you might not expect. So something for everyone!”
In this new version, Cinders is given a special mask by her fairy godmother which prompts her to commit acts of mayhem. “The idea is that Cinderella is this innocent person, so the mask is a way of her turning to the dark side,” Edwards says. “Cinderella’s revenge in the fairytale is by being successful and marrying the prince, but in this there’s proper physical, violent revenge.”
The film stars Lauren Staerck as Cinderella, while the character’s fairy godmother is portrayed by Natasha Henstridge, best known for playing the alien creature in 1995’s science-fiction horror movie Species. “We talked about how we were going to play the character and whether she was going to be British,” Edwards says of Henstridge, having seen Species in theaters back in the ’90s. “But we decided that might be more fun if she plays it blonde and Californian. [It] adds another little twist to the film.”
Edwards shot the film last spring in the U.K. where locations included a couple of the country’s ancestral homes and the maze at a closed-for-the-season amusement park. Hey, that sounds like a fun place to film.
“I wouldn’t recommend shooting in a maze actually,” the director admits. “I was very excited to live my Kubrick/Shining fantasies and get that Steadicam going round the maze. The reality is, you’re on one side of the hedge, the person you need in the scene is on the other side of the hedge, and you might be one foot away from each other, but you have to go all the way round the maze to get back [to them], so everything takes 10 times as long.”
Cinderella’s Revenge is one of several upcoming movies which add a gruesome twist to childhood icons. Producers seem to be hoping to capture the public’s imagination in the same way Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey did when images from the film went viral in 2022. In addition to Edwards’ film, that list of coming attractions includes a sequel Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, Bambi: The Reckoning, Mickey’s Mouse Trap (in which a certain fictional rodent goes on a killing spree), and even a second U.K.-shot Cinders tale, Cinderella’s Curse. Edwards reveals that he is well aware of the latter film but believes both Cinderella movies can have a fairytale ending.
“The U.K. independent horror scene is a fairly small world, so I know several of the people involved [with Cinderella’s Curse], and I bumped into the director recently,” he explains. “I said we should have a cast-and-crew screening of both movies, play them back to back. So there’s rivalry, but it would be good-natured rivalry. I think their version will be different enough so that if audiences did want to watch both, then I don’t think they’re going to be seeing the same movie.”
Cinderella’s-Revenge (2024)
Directed by: Andy Edwards
Starring: Lauren Staerck, Natasha Henstridge, Stephanie Lodge, Beatrice Fletcher, Megan Purvis, Darrell Griggs, Mike Kelson, Ricardo Freitas, Peter Watson, William Marshall, Mark Collier
Screenplay by: Charles Perrault
Production Design by: Nasir Simmons
Cinematography by: Liam Hejsak
Film Editing by: Sean Cain
Art Direction by: Aaron Haynes, Jason Mayoh
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Quiver Distribution, Iconic Events Releasing
Release Date: April 26, 2024
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