Disney has held the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh since 1966, but just like Steamboat Willie at the start of this year, the character entered the public domain in 2022. The horror movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was among the first projects announced and the sequel is less than a month away.
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 gruesome and terrifying manner.
This likely wasn't how A. A. Milne and Walt Disney ever hoped to see Winnie the Pooh and company portrayed on screen. However, the first instalment of this burgeoning franchise managed to gross an impressive $5.2 million on a mere $100,000 budget despite not receiving mostly negative reviews from critics.
Very little has been revealed about the follow-up, though we know Pooh's friend-turned-enemy Christopher Robin will return. A new look at him has been revealed alongside an extreme close-up of a character believed to be Pooh (we thought it might be Tigger but, either way, he's nightmare-inducing).
Last year, returning Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey director and co-writer Rhys Waterfield recently revealed how the team working on this sequel was - 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 explained. "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."
Disney has largely ignored projects like this one and they still hold the rights to their versions of the characters. As of now, there don't appear to be any plans for them on screen.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is set to be released on February 14, 2024.