Thanks to the insatiable appetite of horror fans for the twisted and depraved, the independent film scene has seen some recent microbudget box office hits, from “Terrifier 2” to “Skinamarink.” The next one may come from the Hundred Acre Wood with “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.”
Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, “Blood and Honey” reimagines Winnie the Pooh and Piglet as bloodthirsty slasher villains bent on revenge against Christopher Robin after he left them behind upon reaching adulthood. The film’s first trailer was a viral hit after it was released this past August, and now event film distributor Fathom Events will be bringing “Blood and Honey” to approximately 1,500 theaters starting February 15 for a nine-day limited engagement.
“There are so many films with the usual horror monsters, like werewolves and ghosts, and we want to make something that really stood out,” Frake-Waterfield told TheWrap. “I thought that maybe if we were lucky, we’d have a very small theatrical run, and now we’re playing all over the world.” And more titles may be following in its footsteps, with familiar characters made newly available through the expiration of valuable intellectual property rights.
“Blood and Honey” is the first installment of what Frake-Waterfield hopes will be a long series of indie horror films based on classic children’s tales and characters that have entered the public domain. According to U.S. copyright law, characters and artistic works lose their exclusive IP rights after a set peiod of time: either 70 years after the death of the original author or 95 years after publication.
This means that A.A. Milne’s original 1926 “Winnie the Pooh” novel, and all the characters within, entered the public domain at the start of 2022, along with Felix Salten’s “Bambi: A Life in the Woods.” The latter book is one of the projects Frake-Waterfield wants to hit up next.
“With these characters, I didn’t want to go the ‘Chucky’ route. I wanted to make Pooh menacing and scary and just let the crazy contrast of seeing this character as a slasher villain speak for itself,” he said.
When the first trailer for “Blood and Honey” hit YouTube, it didn’t even have a theatrical release. The film was made by Frake-Waterfield with his producing partner Scott Jeffrey through their independent production company Jagged Edge. The film was intended for home release only through ITN Distribution, an indie distributor that sells DVDs of microbudget films at Walmart and other retailers.
Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said that his company had previously been in contact with ITN and had been open to partnering with them on a theatrical event release if they produced a film that might be worthy of one. When Nutt’s team caught wind of “Blood and Honey” gaining online buzz, the two companies entered talks on a distribution deal that was finalized and announced this past November.
“My programming department started following this on social and came to me and said, ‘A lot of people really want to see this. Wouldn’t it be great to give them a chance to see this on a forty-foot screen?’” Nutt said. “We closed the deal in 24 hours.”
Of course, YouTube and social media buzz for a two-minute indie trailer doesn’t necessarily equate to ticket sales. But Nutt said Fathom has seen ticket sales surge over the past week after “Blood and Honey” trailers screened in front of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Knock at the Cabin.”
The break-even point for this film is trivially low, as Nutt and Frake-Waterfield said the production budget is below the meager $250,000 for “Terrifier 2,” the ultraviolent cult hit that grossed $10.6 million in theaters last fall. “Blood and Honey” probably won’t make that much given its limited engagement, but could make more than IFC’s “Skinamarink,” the experimental horror film from Kyle Edward Ball that has made $1.9 million against a production budget of just $15,000.
It’s likely that a lot of the appeal for “Blood and Honey” among horror fans is how it is perceived as a nose-thumbing at that other major Hollywood studio that has adapted Milne’s work. Ironically, Disney is partly the reason why Milne’s book hasn’t hit public domain until now, as the current laws dictating that artistic works enter the public domain 95 years after release come from the Copyright Term Extension Act, legislation Disney lobbied heavily for in Congress and which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1998.
Despite that connection between Pooh, public domain and the Mouse, Frake-Waterfield insisted this film and potential series are not intended to be a swipe at Disney, and that he’s looking at other works not adapted by the studio for future installments.
“Outside of Disney, there’s a lot of other characters that could have that contrast of seeing them as horror villains that are either entering the public domain or haven’t been used by the copyright holders for decades and could be licensed,” he said. “There’s so many icons out there like Mr. Blobby that aren’t in public domain but might be available for licensing.”
That said, Frake-Waterfield still had to tread carefully while filming “Blood and Honey.” His depiction of Pooh as a manhunting killer could not bear any resemblance to Disney’s version. This is also partly a reason why Pooh only has one line in the film, so you won’t be hearing him say “Oh, bother” as he spills blood.
“From the beginning, I just approached this film by forgetting everything that Disney has done with Pooh,” he said. “Only look at the 1926 book and adapt and change and twist whatever is in there. I went on massive tangents, like making Pooh human-sized so that there was no misinterpreting from their version.”
Beyond the Disney version of Pooh, there’s one big Hundred Acre Wood character Frake-Waterfield couldn’t adapt: Tigger. That’s because the exuberant feline was introduced in Milne’s second book “The House at Pooh Corner,” which doesn’t enter the public domain until 2024.
But what remains should still be enough to satisfy the appetites of those who can’t get enough of the cheap, macabre world of indie horror. Shows like Shudder’s “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs” and companies like the American Genre Film Archive have built cult followings among those looking for the most bizarre, off-the-beaten-path horror and sci-fi films, whether out of genuine love for gonzo indie cinema or just a love for that unique flavor of so-bad-it’s-good fare you can only find on old VHS tapes or at the bottom of a DVD bargain bin.
Jagged Edge and Fathom Events believe they have that audience hooked with “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” and Frake-Waterfield said he hopes everyone buying a ticket gets their fill of screams and laughs.
“Jagged Edge is just me and Scott, so we are about as indie as it gets,” he said. “It was really gratifying to get texts from people saying they had so much fun watching this film and now we are getting offers from other studios that can allow us to raise the budget. So with future films we’re going to have a better production value, more kills, better score, take things to another sort of level.”
