When moviegoers hear the mention of Winnie the Pooh, their mind is instantly teleported to the colorful and bright world of the honey-loving silly old bear who finds himself in hilarious situations in his bid to get more honey. The character which was created by writer A. A. Milne made his big-screen debut in 1966 in the movie titled Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, where director Wolfgang Reitherman follows his attempts to raid a beehive in a tall tree.
Since then, the bear has appeared in various Disney adaptations and has largely stayed true to his original goofy persona. However, fans got to see a very different avatar of the character in the horror movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey earlier this year. While viewers were stunned by Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s take on Winnie the Pooh, the director was surprised by The Walt Disney Company’s response to his work.
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How Disney Reacted to Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s Twisted Take on Winnie the Pooh
For decades, the friendship between Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin has been a big part of the stories based in the Hundred Acre Wood. But young filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield subverted their much-loved chemistry and brought forward a very different side of the goofy bear.
In Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Pooh and Piglet transform into feral creatures who embark on a bloody rampage to find a new source of food after Christopher abandons them for college. They terrorize their old friend and a group of young women at a remote house.
During its production, Frake-Waterfield was very conservative with his approach to avoid comparisons to the Disney films, and despite having a free pass to shape the character after Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, the director acknowledged that the entertainment conglomerate could’ve stopped them had they wanted. He told IndieWire:
“If they wanted to, Disney could have shut us down. Like, the company is so f—-ng massive, they could have just gone — even if they had no grounds for it — “Well, we’re suing you, and we’re just gonna throw the book at you. And we’re just gonna tie you up legally. And this will not go out there.” So there was that, that risk that even if we did everything 100%, they could just intentionally be litigators. But they didn’t.”
Disney’s reaction isn’t the only thing that surprised Frake-Waterfield. He was also stumped with just how much attention the micro-budget project got from fans and the media alike after the release of its trailer.
Will There Be Another Horror Winnie the Pooh Movie?
With a worldwide box office collection of $5.2 million, the British independent slasher film exceeded all expectations and has given a boost to Frake-Waterfield and his team, who are now working on Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.
The movie is scheduled to release in February of next year and will feature another beloved character, Tigger, in a new avatar. During the making of the first film, Tigger had not entered the public domain, as per IndieWire.
As more iconic Disney-controlled titles get ready to follow suit, it would be interesting to see how they will react to similar eccentric takes on their fairy tale-based characters.
