Forget everything you know about Winnie the Pooh because things are about to get bloody for our beloved Pooh Bear.
A.A. Milne’s classic children’s tale is marching into the horror genre with the new slasher film, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, and it will take two of the most beloved characters from the franchise—Pooh and Piglet—and turn them into feral creatures.
The movie will follow Pooh and Piglet after they’ve been abandoned by their childhood friend and companion, Christopher Robin, who will now be off to college and ambivalent about his once-childhood friends. Because of this, Pooh and Piglet will go on a rampage. “They’ve essentially become feral,” said director Rhys Waterfield in an interview with Variety. “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 concept alone is humorous, but not entirely implausible. Waterfield seems to have taken the most tame and endearing characters from a children’s classic and posed an entirely legitimate question: “What if they got really hungry?” Above and beyond that: “What if they got angry?” It’s a concept that feels unimaginable for kindhearted Pooh and insecure Piglet, but Waterfield seems determined to explore the possibilities. Addressing those concerns with Variety, he said:
“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.”
Humorous, yet terrifying rampages include chloroforming an unsuspecting woman in a jacuzzi, tying her up, and then placing her in the middle of the road and driving over her head with a car. You know, just your run-of-the-mill Pooh and Piglet adventures. “It’s scary, but there’s also funny bits,” said Waterfield. “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.]”
When will Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey release in theaters?
After many months of waiting, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey received an official release date, but before you get too excited, know that the movie will premiere in theaters for one day only—on Feb. 15, to be exact. The day after Valentine’s Day, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey will take a stab at the classic children’s story, premiering in hundreds of theaters across the U.S., according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The extremely limited release for this extremely low-budget film is due in large part to the torrent of buzz surrounding the production in the months after the public learned of its creation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the move even underwent additional shoots and an “expanded production,” due to the high volume of word-of-mouth publicity.
The movie will undoubtedly create a bloody splash when it premieres in theaters, and one can only wonder whether or not the fans have the power to expand the movie’s limited release to more than just one day.
Disney has had little to say on Waterfield’s use of Winnie the Pooh and can truly only step in if the creators branch out beyond the 1926 version of Winnie the Pooh, which entered the public domain on Jan. 1. They appear to have stayed within the lines, and now even have their eye on another beloved children’s story.
