In the nicest of terms that isn’t intended to cause offense to anybody involved, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was hardly a movie designed for real actors.
As a blood-soaked riff on an iconic character taking serious creative liberties with the public domain, writer and director Rhys Wakefield’s trendsetter turned a ludicrous profit at the box office to help usher in the age of revisionist fairy tale reboots and adaptations of beloved family-friendly characters under the guise of one-trick pony slashers.
For his contributions to the world of cinema, the filmmaker has seen Blood and Honey ranked as one of the worst motion pictures in the entire history of the medium on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, but that hasn’t stopped a sequel from being ushered into development in double-quick time, with cameras now rolling on the follow-up.
In an incredibly disheartening announcement, though, Variety revealed that Simon Callow – a full-blooded thespian and esteemed veteran of stage and screen – has boarded the project. The veteran will play Cavendish, “a pivotal character with a dark past somehow tied to Christopher Robin,” but it really just makes us sad that a genuine high-caliber talent has decided to sign on for the successor to what’s statistically been proven as one of celluloid’s lowest ebbs.
Among his many credits covering film, television, and plays, Callow has lent his talents to Amadeus, A Room with a View, Howard’s End, and Shakespeare in Love, with those four titles alone combining to win 18 Academy Awards including more than one Best Picture trophy, but here is sidling up to the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey sequel in a damning indictment of where we are as a society.
