Netflix Sets Dates for Cinderella Spin-Off STEPS and Brad Bird’s RAY GUNN

Published: June 25, 2026

By Movieguide® Staff

Netflix made its presence felt at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France this week, rolling out first looks, release dates, and a holiday lineup built around genuine storytelling ambition.

“Think you know Cinderella’s ‘evil’ stepsisters? Think again,” the streamer teases about STEPS, its animated movie arriving Nov. 20 — and that one sentence might be the most interesting premise to come out of Hollywood this season.

STEPS centers on Lilith and Margot, the infamous stepsisters voiced by Ali Wong and Stephanie Hsu. Lilith swipes the Fairy Godmother’s magic wand, crashes the Royal Ball and accidentally delivers the kingdom into the hands of Priscilla — a scheming villain played by Nikki Glaser. Cinderella herself, voiced by Amanda Seyfried, has to join forces with the very stepsisters who tormented her to save everything from falling apart.

Bette Midler plays the long-suffering Fairy Godmother. Amy Poehler produces through her Paper Kite Productions alongside Jane Hartwell and Kim Lessing, with co-directors John Ripa and Alyce Tzue leading the Netflix Animation Studios production. Given Poehler’s track record with ensemble comedies built around strong, complicated women, the setup has a real shot at being something more than a clever premise.

Then comes RAY GUNN on Dec. 18. Brad Bird — the director behind THE INCREDIBLES and RATATOUILLE — returns to animation with a noir sci-fi story set in Metropia, a sprawling city imagined as it might have looked from an alternate 1939. Private eye Raymond Gunn gets pulled into a case that weaves together aliens, murder and a multimedia star named Venus Nova.

Sam Rockwell voices Gunn, with Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits rounding out the principal cast. Skydance Animation produces, with John Lasseter, Skydance Media founder David Ellison and Dana Goldberg among the producers. Bird stepped back from directing INCREDIBLES 3 to finish this long-gestating project — which says plenty about how much of himself he has put into it.

Movieguide® readers know Bird’s work well. THE INCREDIBLES won the Movieguide® Teddy Bear Award in 2004, earning the platform’s highest quality rating and a “very strong Christian worldview” designation for its celebration of family, sacrifice, and using one’s God-given gifts. Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr called it “the best family film” of that year, praising it for supporting “the good and rebuking the bad” with the kind of moral clarity Hollywood rarely delivers.

THE INCREDIBLES 2 earned a Movieguide® Teddy Bear Award nomination in 2018. Before his Pixar run, Bird wrote and directed THE IRON GIANT — a movie Movieguide® also praised for its moral depth. He later moved into live-action with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL and TOMORROWLAND before returning to animation with RAY GUNN.

Both STEPS and RAY GUNN arrive at a moment when Netflix is actively competing at the top of the animated movie space. The streamer counts more than 130 million members watching animation monthly, and it followed last year’s KPOP DEMON HUNTERS — the first non-Disney/Pixar animated movie to win more than one Oscar — with this fall’s ambitious slate. The bar is high, and both movies are clearly meant to clear it.

Movieguide® will review STEPS and RAY GUNN when they hit Netflix later this year.

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