Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 British independent slasher film written, directed and co-produced by Rhys Frake-Waterfield in his directorial debut. The first film in the Twisted Childhood Universe, it serves as a horror retelling of A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh books and stars Craig David Dowsett as Winnie-the-Pooh and Chris Cordell as Piglet. It follows Pooh and Piglet, who have now become feral and bloodthirsty murderers and embark on a murderous rampage, as they terrorize a group of young university women and an adult Christopher Robin when he returns to the Hundred Acre Wood five years later after 'leaving for college.
The film was first announced on May 24, 2022, where it drew widespread attention due to its premise involving a character that garnered a reputation as a "beloved childhood icon" and was met with divided reactions. It went into development after the 1926 Winnie-the-Pooh book entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2022. A ten-day period of shooting for the film took place in the Ashdown Forest of East Sussex, England, that serves as inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood, the setting for the stories.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was originally set for a nationwide one-night event, but a spike in online popularity expanded it to a major worldwide theatrical release. It premiered in Mexico on 26 January 2023, and was theatrically released in the United States on 15 February 2023, and in the United Kingdom on 10 March 2023. The film was heavily panned by critics, with some considering it as one of the worst films ever made, and received five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture. Despite that, the film was a commercial success and grossed $5 million worldwide.
A sequel, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II, is scheduled for release on March 26, 2024, with Scott Chambers, Ryan Oliva and Eddy McKenzie replacing Leon, Dowsett and Cordell as Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet, respectively.
== Synopsis ==
Many years ago, a young Christopher Robin met a group of anthropomorphic creatures – Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, and Owl – in the Hundred Acre Wood, and they became friends with him. As he grew older, Christopher entered college and was forced to leave them on their own. Without Christopher to feed them and give them guidance, and with the arrival of winter, Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Owl went into extreme starvation and killed and ate Eeyore, which traumatized them to the point where they developed a hatred for anything human-related, as well as Christopher for leaving them behind. The group then made a pact to abandon their humanity and return to their feral instincts, also vowing to never talk again.
Five years later, a now-adult Christopher returns to the Hundred Acre Wood accompanied by his fiancée, Mary Robin, to reunite with his old friends, only to find the place in a desolate state. Despite Mary's warnings to leave, Christopher investigates further and is surprised by Piglet, who chokes Mary to death with a chain. Horrified, Christopher tries to run away, but ends up getting cornered by Pooh and Piglet, who then drag him back into the woods.
Sometime later, a group of university students – Maria, Jess, Alice, Zoe, and Lara – rent a cabin in the Hundred Acre Wood at the suggestion of Maria's therapist so she can forget about her traumatic experience with a stalker. Tina, another of Maria's friends, gets lost on the way to the cabin and gets chased by Pooh into an abandoned factory, where Pooh grinds her up with a woodchipper. Meanwhile, in Pooh's treehouse, Christopher has been held prisoner by Pooh, who brutally whips him with Eeyore's detached tail in retaliation for leaving his former friends to fend for themselves.
As night falls, Pooh and Piglet find the cabin and kidnap Lara who is relaxing in a hot tub. Piglet gags her while Pooh drives a car into Lara's head, crushing her skull. Maria and Jess hear the commotion and find Lara's corpse, running back to the cabin to warn Alice and Zoe. The girls are attacked by Pooh and get separated from each other. Piglet also enters the cabin, knocks Alice unconscious, and kills Zoe with a sledgehammer. Maria and Jess watch as Pooh and Piglet take Alice away and decide to follow them into the woods to rescue her.
In Pooh's treehouse, Maria and Jess free Alice, Christopher, and another hostage named Charlene, whose husband Scott has already been murdered by Piglet. Seeking revenge, Charlene summons Piglet to kill him, but Pooh subdues her and lets Piglet to maul her face to death. Pooh chases Maria and Jess into the woods while Alice stays behind to bludgeon an unsuspecting Piglet with his own sledgehammer. Hearing Piglet's screams, Pooh runs back to the treehouse, but finds him already unconcious. Enraged, Pooh confronts Alice before she could kill Piglet and proceeds to fatally impale her to the wall with a knife.
Maria and Jess run to the road, where they stop a car driven by four local men– Logan, Tucker, John, and Colt– to ask for help. Despite the men's attempts to take him down, Pooh easily kills them one by one until Maria tries to run him over with the car. Pooh climbs into the car and Maria ends up crashing into a tree, losing consciousness. Maria wakes up, only to witness Pooh decapitating Jess. Pooh then attempts to kill Maria until Christopher appears driving another car, crushing him between the two cars and seemingly killing Pooh.
Christopher tries to help Maria, but Pooh, having survived, catches up to them and grabs Maria, preparing to kill her with his knife. Christopher implores Pooh to spare Maria, and vows to spend the rest of his life staying in the Hundred Acre Wood with him. Pooh breaks his vow to not speak to say "you left" to Christopher, and slices Maria's throat. After Maria slowly bleeds to death, Christopher eventually flees the woods while Pooh repeatedly stabs her corpse.
== Cast ==
* Nikolai Leon as Christopher Robin
** Frederick Dallaway as young Christopher Robin
* Craig David Dowsett as Winnie-the-Pooh
* Chris Cordell as Piglet
* Maria Taylor as Maria
* Natasha Rose Mills as Jess
* Amber Doig-Thorne as Alice
* Danielle Ronald as Zoe
* Natasha Tosini as Lara
* Paula Coiz as Mary Robin
* May Kelly as Tina
* Richard D. Myers as Logan
* Simon Ellis as Tucker
* Jase Rivers as John
* Marcus Massey as Colt
* Danielle Scott as Charlene
* Mark Haldor as Scott
* Toby Wynn-Davies as the Narrator
== Production ==
=== Development ===
On May 24, 2022, Josh Korngut of Dread Central reported the announcement of a Winnie-the-Pooh-based horror film adaptation. The characters' rights had been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1966 and, while Disney retains exclusive rights to the depictions of these characters from their own franchise, the first Winnie-the-Pooh book went into the public domain in January 1, 2022. After the copyright lapsed, Rhys Frake-Waterfield began production on Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey the same year, with the film marking his directorial debut. Speaking to Variety, Frake-Waterfield described the plot as both Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet turn into homicidal maniacs after Christopher Robin left them for college. He stated:
"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. 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 masks used for Pooh and Piglet in the film were created by the American prosthetic-mask manufacturing company Immortal Masks, which actually did the Winnie-the-Pooh-styled masks before the 1926 book entered the public domain. On 16 February 2023, Frake-Waterfield explained in an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment that the first draft of the film was meant to be more close to the original source material. However, The Walt Disney Company still retained the exclusive rights to the depictions of these characters from their own franchise, so Waterfield had to scrap the original script and rewrote it to avoid any legal trouble.
=== Filming ===
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was shot in the Ashdown Forest of East Sussex, England, over a period of ten days in April 2022. Jagged Edge Productions produced the film in collaboration with ITN Studios. Frake-Waterfield was careful to avoid Pooh's iconic red shirt, as well as any other elements from Disney's depictions that could pose a copyright issue.
After the increased popularity of the film, ITN gave the film an increased budget, leading to several days of reshoots. This would lead to the film being the most expensive film Waterfield ever directed and the most expensive film produced by ITN, with a budget of under $100,000.
== Marketing ==
After the film's announcement, Salon writer Kelly McClure wrote the film is "a perfect example of the wrong that could come from a creative work slipping into public domain." She continued, calling the film a "horrific take" on Winnie-the-Pooh, also stating "you've got the makings of a dark and twisted cult classic." Jon Mendelsohn, writing for Collider, called the film images "nightmare fuel" and the concept "extremely bizarre" while noting "the internet is freaking out." Rotem Rusak, writing for Nerdist, wrote, "Seeing the iconic bear reimagined as a nightmarish slasher monster speaks to a delightfully imaginative spirit that really inspires us." Justin Carter of Gizmodo wrote: "The appeal of Blood and Honey will depend entirely on if you're willing to meet the movie halfway on its premise, and aren't immediately turned off by the idea of children's characters being turned into murderers or having some dark, edgy backstory. The internet was filled with that sort of thing just a decade or so ago, and this feels like it's very much pulling from that same cloth."
Katarina Feder of Artnet wrote, "...you can't buy publicity like the kind they've had and something tells me that this indie passion project will find its funding, bringing to life the director's unique ideas about murdering women in bikinis."
== Release ==
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was originally planned to be released in October 2022, but the increased publicity and reshoots motivated the change to a 2023 theatrical release. The film premiered in Mexico on January 26, 2023 by Cinemex and was originally set to be released for a one-day event across theaters in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada on February 15, 2023, with Fathom Events and Altitude Film Distribution acquiring the rights to release it in their respective countries. On January 12, 2023, it was announced that the film has been given a worldwide expanded theatrical release starting on February 15, 2023. The film was then released in the United Kingdom on March 10. For one week, the film was re-released in cinemas in the United States on March 17. A Hong Kong release was canceled due to purported technical glitches, but the film may have been censored due to Internet memes comparing Winnie-the-Pooh to CCP general secretary Xi Jinping; Christopher Robin'“ was banned in 2018 for that reason.
== Box office ==
Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey has grossed $2 million in the United States and Canada, and $3 million in other territories, including over $1 million in Mexico, for a worldwide total of $5.2 million.
== Reception ==
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was panned by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, 3% of 62 critics' aggregated reviews are positive, with an average rating of 2.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Oh, bother." Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 16 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".
== Future ==
=== Sequel ===
In June 2022, Frake-Waterfield expressed interest in creating a sequel, and stated that he wants to "ramp it up even more and go even crazier and go even more extreme". In November 2022, he announced that a sequel, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II, was in development with him returning as director and writer, on a budget "five times" larger than the previous installment. The sequel filmed in late 2023, with an anticipated release date of February 2024, which was later revealed to be March 26, 2024. In August 2023, Frake-Waterfield announced that Pooh will use a chainsaw as a weapon in the sequel. That September, Pooh, and Piglet were confirmed to have new designs in teaser images, with the new characters Owl and Tigger also confirmed to appear. Actors Scott Chambers, Ryan Oliva and Eddy McKenzie will replace Nikolai Leon, Craig-David Dowsett and Chris Cordell as Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet, respectively.
=== Shared universe ===
Alongside the announcement of a sequel, two other horror films were announced: Bambi: The Reckoning and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare respectively based on Bambi, a Life in the Woods and Peter and Wendy. In February 2023, Frake-Waterfield announced that the various projects take place in the same shared continuity franchise, while Jagged Edge Productions intends to eventually have the characters feature in crossover events. In January 2024, it was revealed that The Adventures of Pinocchio would also be adapted into a horror film that is set within the same continuity, titled Pinocchio: Unstrung. Other characters that will expanded the universe and future projects will be displayed through drawings during the credits of Blood and Honey II. In March 2024, the series' first crossover film titled Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble was revealed, with Scott Chambers confirmed to be reprising his role as Christopher Robin as well as Roxanne McKee returning as Xana from Bambi: The Reckoning, along with brand new characters such as Sleeping Beauty, the Talking Cricket and the Mad Hatter.
== Videos ==
Winnie the Pooh- Blood and Honey - Official Trailer
'Winnie the Pooh- Blood and Honey' Exclusive Trailer - HD (2023)
Category:British films
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Category:Winnie-the-Pooh films