Shaheer Ahmed
Winnie the Pooh, who you may remember as a charming, cuddly bear, is poised to get a horrifying makeover as the knife-wielding antagonist of a bloody new slasher movie.
Pooh’s stunning remake, which opens in US theatres on Wednesday and has already prompted death threats from irate fans, has the potential to break feature office records and push the boundaries of intellectual property law.
While Disney has held the rights to Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore’s family-friendly big-screen adventures for decades, Frake-small Waterfield’s British independent studio recently seized the chance when the copyright on the first A.A. Milne books expired.
The original Blood and Honey pictures rapidly went viral last year, showing a terrifying, human-sized Pooh and Piglet lurking menacingly behind a young woman unwinding in a hot tub.
The live-action movie, which was produced on a shoestring budget of about $250,000, is about to have a significant global theatre distribution.
The first images of Blood and Honey, in which a sinister, human-sized Pooh and Piglet hovered menacingly behind a young woman relaxing in a hot tub, quickly went viral last year.
It is already out in Mexico, where it has made nearly $1 million in two weeks, and some industry analysts are tipping it to become one of the most profitable films of all time.
An AFP reporter at a screening in Mexico City this week said many audience members appeared to be leaving the theater disappointed, with Jonathan Ortiz, 32, describing the film as “very bad.”
