A mysterious upcoming horror film titled Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has appeared on our radar today, and we have questions. The very indie horror title is reportedly in post-production from writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and stars Amber Doig-Thorne, Maria Taylor and Danielle Scott. According to the project’s IMDb page, the film is a grisly retelling of the Winnie the Pooh “legend”.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a famous fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear written into existence by English literary legend A.A Milne alongside the famous illustrator E.H Shepard. The character first became famous back in 1926 with the picture book collection The House at Pooh Corner. Pooh would be turned into a household name in 1961 when Walt Disney Productions began making the character into a collection of films. Winnie the Pooh has gone on to become one of the worlds premiere children’s entertainment franchises.
Now the bear is back, and he’s got a brand new look. He also doesn’t seem to be up to any good, from what we can tell in these official stills from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. While not much is known about this forthcoming horror film, the images are giving off a very indie You’re Next energy, from the barnyard animal masks, to a message in blood smeared across windows.
Disney can't do anything. Pooh is in Public Domain as of January of this year and as long as its not a red shirt wearing Pooh Bear they can do whatever they want
Disney can't do anything. Pooh is in Public Domain as of January of this year and as long as its not a red shirt wearing Pooh Bear they can do whatever they want
He is wearing a red flannel shirt in the promo pics.......and public domain Pooh is suppose to be brown and not yellow like the mask in said pic.....
Oh, I feel like this is gonna be a wild and crazy legal ride.
I used to cry hysterically when I was a kid and Pooh would get stuck in the tree. According to my parents it might as well have been a horror film back then.
I'm sure disney isn't happy about this but I doubt they can do much of anything about it. Yeah he's got some red one but this is so different that I'd imagine the filmmakers are in the clear. As long as Tiger isn't in the movie they should be okay, Tiger has to wait a couple more years before he gets his freedom.
I'm sure disney isn't happy about this but I doubt they can do much of anything about it. Yeah he's got some red one but this is so different that I'd imagine the filmmakers are in the clear. As long as Tiger isn't in the movie they should be okay, Tiger has to wait a couple more years before he gets his freedom.
The Pooh mask is also yellow, while the public domain Pooh is suppose to be brown.
The Pooh mask is also yellow, while the public domain Pooh is suppose to be brown.
You can make your own variations of public domain characters, there isn't anything that says you can't do that. Your overthinking the color palette. The character in the picture is so radically different from the disney version that I don't see what the issue could be.
You can make your own variations of public domain characters, there isn't anything that says you can't do that. Your overthinking the color palette. The character in the picture is so radically different from the disney version that I don't see what the issue could be.
It is literally called Winnie the Pooh and the "killer bear thing" is wearing a red shirt and has yellow fur. Which is directly based on the much more commonly recognized Disney version of Pooh. Only Piglet seems to have his design changed enough.
That and the filmmaker's are clearly betting on the name attracting eyes, which seems to be working thanks to all these articles, till it quietly disappears in a few . . . months, days, hours?!?
In an interview with Variety, director Rhys Waterfield, who is in post-production on four other films including “Firenado” and “Demonic Christmas Tree,” said the response to the stills has been “absolutely crazy.”
“Because of all the press and stuff, we’re just going to start expediting the edit and getting it through post production as fast as we can,” said Waterfield. “But also, making sure it’s still good. It’s gonna be a high priority.”
According to Waterfield, who also wrote and co-produced the film, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” will see Pooh and Piglet as “the main villains…going on a rampage” after being abandoned by a college-bound Christopher Robin. “Christopher Robin is pulled away from them, and he’s not [given] them food, it’s made Pooh and Piglet’s life quite difficult.”
“Because they’ve had to fend for themselves so much, they’ve essentially become feral,” Waterfield continued. “So they’ve gone back to their animal roots. They’re no longer tame: they’re like a vicious bear and pig who want to go around and try and find prey.”
The film was shot in 10 days in England, not far from Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for Milne’s imaginary Hundred Acre Wood in the “Winnie the Pooh” stories. Although Waterfield declined to reveal the budget for the slasher flick, he said audiences “shouldn’t be expecting this to be a Hollywood-level production.” Jagged Edge Productions, which Waterfield runs with co-producer Scott Jeffrey, made the film, and ITN Studios have already signed on to distribute it (a release date is TBD).
Given the premise, the biggest challenge, Waterfield said, was balancing the line between horror and comedy. “When you try and do a film like this, and it’s a really wacky concept, it’s very easy to go down a route where nothing is scary and it’s just really ridiculous and really, like, stupid. And we wanted to go between the two.”
As an example, Waterfield explained the set-up behind the still (above) of a girl relaxing in a jacuzzi with Pooh and Piglet ominously standing nearby. “She’s having a good time and then Pooh and Piglet appear behind her, chloroform her, take her out of the jacuzzi and then kind of drive a car over her head,” Waterfield said. “It’s scary but there’s also funny bits because there’s shots of Winnie the Pooh in a car and seeing him with his little ears behind the wheel and like slowly going over there [to kill her.]”
The only worry, especially with all the new-found publicity, is whether Disney will have anything to say about “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.” Although Milne’s earliest stories are now out of copyright, Disney retains exclusive use of their interpretations of Pooh Bear and his friends. “We’ve tried to be extremely careful,” said Waterfield. “We knew there was this line between that, and we knew what their copyright was and what they’ve done. So we did as much as we could to make sure [the film] was only based on the 1926 version of it.”
Which is why Waterfield’s Pooh Bear has swapped the little red t-shirt for a lumberjack suit and Piglet is clad in black. It’s also why other characters still in copyright, such as Tigger, will not appear — although there is a scene featuring Eeyore’s tombstone, the miserable donkey having been eaten by a starving Pooh and Piglet.
“No one is going to mistake this [for Disney],” Waterfield said. “When you see the cover for this and you see the trailers and the stills and all that, there’s no way anyone is going to think this is a child’s version of it.”
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