While Disney has held the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh since 1966, the character entered the public domain at the start of 2022 and among the first projects announced was a horror movie titled Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.
A gross-out gore fest, it wasn't exactly aimed at Disney fans, but a lot of people had fun seeing the loveable characters from the Hundred Acre Wood depicted in such a unique manner. Now, after the first instalment grossed $5.2 million on a $100,000 budget, a sequel is officially on the way.
Last month, we got a first look at the follow-up's ferocious take on Tigger and director and co-writer Rhys Waterfield recently told Variety (via Toonado.com) how they were - legally - able to bring that character into the mix.
"You couldn’t use Tigger before because he wasn’t in the public domain then," he explains. "But Tigger is in the public domain on January 1, 2024 and the film is coming out a month later."
"We’ve finished principal photography and the film is currently in the post-production stages," Waterfield added. "I’m tidying up the edit and we’ve got various departments working on it in terms of the music, sound, grade and animation, VFX, all of that stuff."
After confirming the sequel has a budget 10x bigger than its predecessor, the filmmaker promised fans some "crazy kills" and "one sequence in the movie which is absolutely wild" Pushed for details, he added, "There’s a group of girls in a motor home, they’re having a good time and then Winnie the Pooh and Owl turn up and then...they don’t have a good time."
Oh, bother.
Waterfield also confirmed both Pooh and Tigger will have fur in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 and said that, while it presented certain challenges, it makes the characters feel more real. All the better to haunt our nightmares, eh?
While we can't imagine this will ever be how A. A. Milne and Walt Disney hoped or expected to see Winnie the Pooh portrayed on screen, this burgeoning franchise - which was a critical flop but embraced by many horror fans - has an audience and seeing Tigger unleash will make them happy, at least!
Disney has largely ignored projects like this and they still hold the rights to their versions of the characters. As of now, though, there don't appear to be any plans for them on screen for the time being.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is set to be released on February 14, 2024.