As previously reported, Disney horror parody Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which puts a slasher spin on the classic children's tale, was recently screened for a group of fourth grade students at the Academy of Innovative Education, a K-12 charter school in Miami Springs.
From what we can gather, the teacher was under the impression that the gory low-budget horror flick was just a normal, kid-friendly Winnie the Pooh adventure. However, he still decided to leave the movie playing even after Pooh and Tigger began their murderous rampage and the "distraught" students asked him to turn it off.
Parents were (understandably) up in arms, and the school was forced to issue a statement addressing the matter (though it wasn't exactly an apology).
Director and co-writer Rhys Waterfield has responded to the incident during an interview with Variety, and he hopes "we haven’t ruined these kids’ childhoods."
"It’s mad, isn’t it? I think it’s crazy. Because when you watch the film there is no way you can mistake it for a child’s film, literally in the first 10 minutes, crazy stuff’s happening. And [the characters] look scary. So I don’t know how — because they said it went on 20 to 30 minutes — I don’t know how it went on that long. I don’t know if the teacher put it on and just walked out and left them or if the kids tricked them or something. Hopefully we haven’t ruined these kids’ childhoods."
We're sure they'll be just fine!
Waterfield was also asked about the upcoming Blood and Honey sequel (which will add Tigger to the mix), and he promises that this movie will up the blood and gore quota considerably.
"In comparison to the first film everything’s stepped up massively. It’s a horror film. A lot of the times people are going there for the death scenes and for those elements and we’ve really upped the ante. I think the last time I did a count there was over 30 deaths in the movie, which is quite substantial compared to most movies. I think that’s at least over three times what the first film had and there’s various massacres and stuff. So there’s a lot of blood and a lot of gore."
"Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 British independent slasher film edited, produced, written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. It serves as a horror reimagining to A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh books and stars Craig David Dowsett as the titular character, and Chris Cordell as Piglet, with Amber Doig-Thorne, Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, and Danielle Ronald in supporting roles. It follows Pooh and Piglet, who have become feral and bloodthirsty murderers, as they terrorise a group of young university women and Christopher Robin when he returns to the Hundred Acre Wood many years later after leaving for college."
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is set to be released on February 14, 2024.