Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey creators: "We’ve not made Hereditary here"
Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and producer Scott Jeffrey discuss their viral horror film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey and the upcoming Bambi: The Reckoning.
Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield has brought Winnie the Pooh back to the big screen – but instead of the loveable, honey-guzzling children’s character created by AA Milne, he's now a gruesome killing machine.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey follows events after Christopher Robin departs the 100 Acre Wood for college, leaving Pooh and Piglet to become feral monsters as they try to survive in the wilderness. When Christopher returns as an adult with his fiancée, he is soon terrorised by his old childhood friends.
It's a premise that instantly went viral last year when the trailer captured the imagination of the internet – and that was exactly what Frake-Waterfield and producer Scott Jeffrey intended when brainstorming ideas.
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The team described their process as "hook and concept based", and when Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in January 2022, they quickly realised they had struck gold.
“Because the concept is so wacky and strange and very different, a lot of people struggle to imagine how he could be a killer," Frake-Waterfield told RadioTimes.com during an exclusive interview. "So we knew we had this X-factor to the idea that we wanted to make into a film.”
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The creative duo initially toyed with the idea of making Pooh like a Chucky character, a small doll running around with a knife – but with such a small budget they realised it wouldn’t be possible without the special effects necessary to pull this off.
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And so instead, they turned Winnie the Pooh and Piglet into six foot half-human, half-animal hybrids.
"[We] go down a Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers route, who are just these big, imposing, and mostly silent monsters who are hunting people down and it's more targeted towards a slasher," said Frake-Waterfield. "[But] it also has those funny elements and satire to it because ultimately it is Winnie the Pooh no matter how much we try to make it super scary.”
And indeed, both Frake-Waterfield and Jeffrey were keen to point out that fun is an important part of the film, with the pair urging cinemagoers not to take it too seriously.
“If you go to the cinema to watch a Winnie the Pooh horror film, go in there and have fun," said the director. "Go there to laugh at points and don’t expect a grounded, elevated horror.”
Jeffrey added: “We’ve not made Hereditary here, we’ve made Winnie the Pooh. Some people expect this really heavy, story-developed, character-driven movie but it’s not, it’s people getting slashed up left, right, and centre and it’s really fun.”
Frake-Waterfield and Jeffrey have big plans for future horror movies similar to Blood and Honey, and are working on creating a universe incorporating numerous beloved characters. This leads to their upcoming movie Bambi: The Reckoning, a horror reimagining of the Disney classic with Jeffrey this time taking on directorial duties.
“It’s going to be carnage," Jeffrey said of the film. "It’s going to be like Jurassic Park meets The Ritual! He’s savage, he’s not going to take s**t from anyone, he will destroy multiple people in one hit and it’s going to be really violent.”
Frake-Waterfield added: "It’s like Bambi on rabies. It’s not a small cute deer; it’s a seven foot monstrosity."
There are also plans for a Peter Pan movie, and whilst the duo are still in the planning stage for this film, it could feature an "incredibly overweight" Tinkerbell who has a crippling pixie dust addiction.
Despite the clear parody of turning Winnie the Pooh and Bambi into vicious killers, Frake-Waterfield has pointed out that this approach is perhaps more in keeping with the origins of many Disney and fairy tale characters than people might expect.
"When you look at their first version they are much darker than what it has been twisted into," he explained. "They have all these dark and twisted elements and I think that’s part of the attraction of what we are doing because we are taking something and twisting it back into almost what it originally was.”
Jeffrey added: “Some people are saying that these characters are their childhood but before they were these great lovely characters they might have been this demented and twisted thing.
“Our big thing is that we are not trying to upset anyone – if you want your version of Bambi then keep that and our’s doesn’t have to exist, but we don’t like cuddly creatures so we’re just making the films that we want to watch.”
Of course, the film industry is essentially a money-making business and distributors might not always take a gamble on this type of movie – but Frake-Waterfield believes the viral success of Winnie the Pooh could be the litmus test for this sub-genre of horror.
There have already been talks about a darker live-action version of Barney the Dinosaur with Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya, plus there's the long-awaited Five Nights at Freddy’s which has started filming with Matthew Lillard and Josh Hutcherson in key roles.
“That’s really exciting for us," said Frake-Waterfield. "As horror fans, [we're] so excited to watch Five Nights at Freddy’s and the Barney horror film because they would pop out to me as they sound exciting and innovative, and it’s not the same old werewolf or zombie movie. It’s creating a wave of new concepts.”
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is released in UK cinemas on Friday 10th March. If you’re looking for more to watch, visit our Film hub or check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide.
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