The official trailer for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey dropped on Wednesday and many viewers were not prepared. The movie puts a horrific twist on a childhood classic, but if you haven’t been following its production you might be understandably confused. The trailer has many commenters suddenly developing opinions on copyright laws.
Blood and Honey is an independent film written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, based on A.A. Milne’s 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh and the many other adaptations that have followed. However, this slasher film is a far cry from Milne’s whimsical childhood fairy tale. It is the first production to use the characters and settings from Winnie-the-Pooh since the franchise became a public domain work in January of 2022.
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Up until this year, Disney held the exclusive film rights to Winnie the Pooh, its characters and its settings. Disney has often been accused of manipulating copyright laws to prevent its most lucrative intellectual properties from going into the public domain. When these rights lapsed, Frake-Waterfield and his collaborators wasted no time in expanding the creative field Winnie the Pooh could exist within.
According to the synopsis, in this version of the story, Christopher Robin played with the anthropomorphic animals of the 100 Acre Woods while also bringing them food. However, as he grew up he made fewer visits to their forest and therefore provided them with less nourishment, making them desperate and resentful. He stopped visiting the forest altogether when he went away to college, and the film opens with him returning as a young adult. He finds his old friends “completely feral and unhinged.”
There’s no word yet on when Blood and Honey will be released or how it will be distributed in the U.S. Some fans are fine with that uncertainty, while others are eager to see it for themselves. Here’s a look at how the conversation has played out online.
Can’t Look Away
Some people said bluntly that they did not like what they saw in the trailer, but that they still intended to see the movie anyway.
Creativity
Many commenters felt that the quality of this movie didn’t matter quite as much as the spectacle of its creation and release. They hoped that Frake-Waterfield would get plenty of accolades for his creativity.
‘Interpretation’
Some viewers thought that this trailer was an imperfect interpretation of the franchise – especially with other recent entries to compare it to.
Stunt
Some criticized this trailer for using a beloved children’s classic as a stunt to draw attention on social media. In many cases, these commenters did not address the issue of the public domain or wrote it off as a small concern.
Anti-Slasher
Many critics were also against slasher films in general, feeling that the genre was tired and unimaginative.
More Franchises
Of course, commenters quickly became obsessed with other well-known characters and franchises becoming public domain to allow more movies like this to exist. Some proposed their personal favorites.
Alternate Pitches
Finally, some fans were interested in an adult Winnie the Pooh movie but thought that there were more interesting approaches than this one.
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