Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 | |
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Directed by | Rhys Frake-Waterfield |
Screenplay by | Matt Leslie |
Story by |
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Based on | |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Vince Knight |
Edited by |
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Music by | Andrew Scott Bell |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Altitude Film Distribution |
Release dates |
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Running time | 94 minutes [1] |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $500,000 [2] |
Box office | $7.6 million [3] [4] |
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (stylised as Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II) is a 2024 British independent slasher film directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and written by Matt Leslie. It is the second installment of The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU) and a sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023). As with the original film, it is a horror parody of A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh books. The film stars Scott Chambers as Christopher Robin, and Ryan Oliva as the titular character, with Tallulah Evans, Teresa Banham, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Alec Newman, and Simon Callow in supporting roles. It follows Pooh as he embarks on a murderous rampage through Christopher Robin's childhood town to seek revenge on him for revealing his existence to the world.
Following the commercial success of Blood and Honey, director Frake-Waterfield expressed interest in a sequel that, eventually, was greenlit in November 2022. The film utilizes metafictional and film within a film elements as Chambers, Oliva, and Eddy McKenzie replace original cast members Nikolai Leon, Craig David Dowsett, and Chris Cordell in the roles of Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Piglet, respectively. [a]
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 premiered in London on 18 March 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States on 26 March 2024. Many critics considered the film to be an improvement over its predecessor. It grossed $7.5 million worldwide on a budget of $500,000. A sequel, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3, is scheduled to be released in 2026.
After narrowly surviving Winnie-the-Pooh's and Piglet's killing spree, [b] Christopher Robin flees from the Hundred Acre Wood and returns to his childhood town of Ashdown to seek help; the corpses of Maria and her friends are recovered from the woods, but Christopher is believed to be responsible.
The incident is dubbed as the "Hundred Acre Massacre", and a film adaptation based on the murders is released, damaging Christopher's reputation in Ashdown. [a] Few people actually believe in Christopher's story, which includes his childhood friends Lexy, Finn, and Aaron, his parents Alan and Daphne, and his younger sister Bunny. Now an outcast, Christopher has nightmares about Pooh and goes to his hypnotherapist Mary Darling to deal with a trauma when his twin brother Billy was kidnapped several years ago during their birthday party and was never seen again.
Meanwhile, in the Hundred Acre Wood, Pooh and Piglet are forced to hide with fellow creatures Tigger and Owl when their home is burned down. After they slaughter three university students in a recreational vehicle, Owl tries to convince Pooh to attack Ashdown instead of waiting for more people to come to the woods. Some hunters, led by Aaron, ambush the creatures and kill Piglet as revenge for the students' death. Pooh kills them and reconsiders Owl's proposal, but Aaron survives and returns to Ashdown.
Due to the town's negative backlash, Christopher loses his job as a doctor and returns with Mary to undergo further hypnotherapy. When Aaron arrives at the local hospital for treatment, Christopher suspects the attack was done by Pooh, which is confirmed when he asks Aaron what happened. He also encounters hospital janitor Cavendish, whom he recognizes as the man who kidnapped Billy, and confronts him in his house. Cavendish reveals that he worked for Dr. Arthur Gallup, a scientist who employed him to kidnap children—among them Billy—around Ashdown for experiments with animal genes in exchange for settling his debts. The children became animal-human hybrids with enhanced healing factors, whom Gallup killed and buried in the Hundred Acre Wood. Cavendish subsequently murdered Gallup and learnt the children resurrected and dug themselves out of their graves. Christopher attempts to warn the entire town about the creatures' imminent attack, but faces ridicule and skepticism, while Cavendish ends up committing suicide out of guilt.
As night falls, Pooh, Tigger, and Owl embark on a rampage throughout Ashdown and kill several residents on the way, including Finn. Pooh personally kills Alan and Daphne and attacks Lexy, but she survives the ordeal. The creatures then arrive at a rave party in a warehouse and slaughter all the partygoers. Christopher rushes to the warehouse, where he fatally shoots Tigger, and learns Bunny was kidnapped. He returns to the Hundred Acre Wood and fights Pooh, who easily subdues him as they stumble across Billy's own grave. Christopher calls Pooh—revealed to be Billy—by his real name. Pooh tries to remember his childhood but accuses Christopher of purposely harming the creatures through abandonment, deeming him responsible for Eeyore's death years prior. [b]
Lexy intervenes and stalls Pooh long enough for Christopher to kill him with an axe. CCTV footage from the creatures' killing spree on Ashdown is passed to the police, who found Bunny unharmed, and Christopher is subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing. Owl, having survived, recovers the corpses of Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet, waiting for them to resurrect and promising that they will get their revenge on Christopher once and for all.
In a June 2022 interview with Josh Korngut of Dread Central, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield expressed interest in creating a sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey , and stated that he wants to "ramp it up even more and go even crazier and go even more extreme". [8] In September 2023, teaser images were released showing the addition of the new character Owl. [9] Principal photography also concluded that month. [10] The film features a new cast and new character designs, and takes place in the town of Ashdown rather than the Hundred Acre Wood. [11] Additionally, the character Tigger, who was absent from the first film, appears since going in the public domain in January 2024. [5] [12] The film's screenplay was written by Matt Leslie. [12]
The film was originally reported to have a budget five times larger than its predecessor; [13] it would later be confirmed that the budget had increased to ten times larger than the first film. [14] Shaune Harrison, who previously worked on productions such as World War Z , the Harry Potter franchise, and Game of Thrones , was the film's creature and gore designer, while Paula Anne Booker leads the special effects. [11] In 2023, it was revealed that Frake-Waterfield intended to have Pooh wield a chainsaw as a weapon in the film, [15] and that the film would feature over thirty deaths. [14] The film takes inspiration from Terrifier 2. [16] Winnie-the-Pooh's prosthetics in the film cost over $20,000 compared to the $770 spent on the first film's costume. [10]
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 premiered at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, London, on 18 March 2024. It was theatrically released in the United States and Canada by Fathom Events on 26 March 2024 and was released in the United Kingdom by Altitude Film Distribution on 7 June 2024. [17] [1] The film was released on Amazon Prime Video on 26 June 2024. [18]
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 grossed $533,144 in the United States and Canada, and over $7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $7.6 million. [19]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 46% of 41 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10.The website's consensus reads: "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 represents an improvement over the original in most respects, although the Poohniverse remains a place made for hardcore slasher fans." [20] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 27 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. [21]
Luke Thompson of The A.V. Club gave the film a positive review, writing "This is cinema at its most punk rock—a raucous, unpolished, cheap, sacred-cow shredding middle finger to the mainstream with just enough raw talent inside to keep it from being dismissable." [22] IGN's Matt Donato gave it a score of 6/10, comparing its approach to that of Terrifier 2 and writing, "It boasts a nastier midnight-movie appeal, radical practical effects, and a brisk 90-minute runtime. It's a shaky first step for Frake-Waterfield's proposed 'Poohniverse' concept – but it's a step in the right direction." [23]
Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave the film a negative review, criticizing the screenplay and direction. He concluded his review by writing, "Somewhere up in drive-in-theater heaven, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Ed Wood are smiling, even if Frake-Waterfield makes them look like Scorsese and Spielberg." [24] The Daily Beast's Nick Schager said the film "boasts a bigger budget, higher production values, and an entirely new cast. Alas, when it comes to the things that matter most—like writing, directing, and acting—it's as chintzy and inept as its predecessor." [25]
On 28 March 2024, two days after the film's release, it was announced that a third film was being developed. [26]
In November 2022, two other horror films were announced: Bambi: The Reckoning and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare based on Bambi, a Life in the Woods and Peter and Wendy , respectively. [27] [28] [29] In February 2023, Frake-Waterfield announced that the various projects take place in The Twisted Childhood Universe, sharing continuity as a franchise. The filmmaker further stated that Jagged Edge Productions intends to eventually have crossovers featuring all of the characters. [30] In January 2024, a third film, Pinocchio: Unstrung , based on The Adventures of Pinocchio , was announced as part of the TCU. [31] Pinocchio: Unstrung was referenced at the end of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2; while other teases to the expanded universe and future projects were displayed through drawings during the end credits. [32]
In March 2024, the series' first crossover film titled Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble was revealed, with Scott Chambers confirmed to be reprising his role as Christopher Robin as well as Roxanne McKee returning as Xana from Bambi: The Reckoning , along with additional horror iterations of fairytale characters such as Sleeping Beauty, Jiminy Cricket and the Mad Hatter. [33]
Frake-Waterfield also expressed interest in making films about Thor, the Norse god of thunder, [34] as well as copyrighted franchises such as Teletubbies , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , and The Powerpuff Girls . [35] [36]
Tigger is a fictional character in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books and their adaptations. An anthropomorphic toy tiger, he was originally introduced in the 1928-story collection The House at Pooh Corner, the sequel to the 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh. Like other Pooh characters, Tigger is based on one of Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed toy animals. He appears in the Disney animated versions of Winnie the Pooh and has also appeared in his own film, The Tigger Movie (2000).
Christopher Robin is a character created by A. A. Milne, based on his son Christopher Robin Milne. The character appears in the author's popular books of poetry and Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and has subsequently appeared in various Disney adaptations of the Pooh stories.
Eeyore is a fictional character in the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. He is an old, grey stuffed donkey and friend of the title character, Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore is generally characterised as pessimistic, depressed, and anhedonic.
A Heffalump is an elephant-like creature in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne. Heffalumps are mentioned, and only appear, in Pooh and Piglet's dreams in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and are seen again in The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Physically, they resemble elephants; E. H. Shepard's illustration shows an Indian elephant. They are later featured in the animated television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988–1991), followed by two animated films in 2005, Pooh's Heffalump Movie and Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie.
Piglet is a fictional character from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books. Piglet is Winnie‑the‑Pooh's closest friend amongst all the toys and animals featured in the stories. Although he is a "Very Small Animal" of a generally timid disposition, he tries to be brave and on occasion conquers his fears.
The House at Pooh Corner is a 1928 children's book by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. This book is the second novel, and final one by Milne, to feature Winnie-the-Pooh and his world. The book is also notable for introducing the character Tigger. The book's exact date of publication is unknown beyond the year 1928, although several sources indicate the date of October 11.
The Hundred Acre Wood is a part of the fictional land inhabited by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Winnie-the-Pooh series of children's stories by author A. A. Milne. The wood is visited regularly by the young boy Christopher Robin, who accompanies Pooh and company on their many adventures.
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is a 1968 American animated musical fantasy short film based on the third, fifth, ninth, and tenth chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh and the second, eighth, and ninth chapters from The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. The featurette was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, produced by Walt Disney Productions, and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company on December 20, 1968, having been shown in theaters with The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. This was the second of the studio's Winnie the Pooh theatrical featurettes. It was later added as a segment to the 1977 film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The music was written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. It was notable for being the last Disney animated short to be produced by Walt Disney, who died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, two years before its release.
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too is a 1974 American animated musical fantasy short film based on the third chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh and the fourth and seventh chapters of The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. The featurette was directed by John Lounsbery, produced by Wolfgang Reitherman, released by Walt Disney Productions, and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It was released on October 21, 1974 for a limited release, before expanding a wide release on December 20, 1974, with the live-action feature film The Island at the Top of the World. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, but lost to Closed Mondays.
Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin is a 1997 American direct-to-video animated musical adventure comedy-drama film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Karl Geurs. The film follows Winnie the Pooh and his friends on a journey to find and rescue their friend Christopher Robin from the skull. Along the way, the group confront their own insecurities throughout the search, facing and conquering them in a series of events where they are forced to act beyond their own known limits, thus discovering their true potential. Unlike the film's predecessors, this film is an entirely original story, not based on any of A. A. Milne's classic stories.
Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore is a 1983 American animated short film based on the sixth chapter of both books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne. Produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution, the short initially received limited release on March 11, 1983, before expanding to a wide release on March 25 as part of a double feature with the re-issue of The Sword in the Stone (1963), which it accompanied in most countries except Australia where it accompanied a reissue of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Directed by Rick Reinert, the featurette featured the voices of Hal Smith, John Fiedler, Will Ryan, Ralph Wright, and Paul Winchell.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925. The character is inspired by a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store, and a bear they had viewed at London Zoo.
Winnie the Pooh is a media franchise produced by The Walt Disney Company, based on A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's stories featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. It started in 1966 with the theatrical release of the short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 British independent slasher film produced, directed, written, and edited by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. The first installment of The Twisted Childhood Universe, it is a horror parody of A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh books and stars Craig David Dowsett as the titular character, and Chris Cordell as Piglet, with Amber Doig-Thorne, Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, and Danielle Ronald in supporting roles. It follows Pooh and Piglet, who have become feral murderers, as they terrorise a group of young university women and Christopher Robin when he returns to the Hundred Acre Wood five years after leaving for college.
Rhys Frake-Waterfield is a British filmmaker who became known for his 2023 independent horror film Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and its 2024 sequel. It was the first theatrical film of his career, as well as the first for his company Jagged Edge Productions.
Bambi: The Reckoning is an upcoming British independent horror film directed by Dan Allen, written by Rhys Warrington, and produced by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Scott Jeffrey. It is the fourth installment in The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU) and serves as a horror retelling of Felix Salten's Bambi, a Life in the Woods. The film stars Roxanne McKee and Tom Mulheron, with Nicola Wright, Samira Mighty, Alex Cooke, Catherine Adams, and Russell Geoffrey Banks in supporting roles. It follows a mother and her son who become hunted by Bambi after his own mother's death.
Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare is an upcoming 2025 British independent horror film written and directed by Scott Jeffrey. It is the third installment in The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU) and serves as a horror retelling of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. The film stars Martin Portlock as the titular character and Megan Placito as Wendy Darling, with Kit Green, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, Charity Kase, Teresa Banham, Nicholas Woodeson, Kierston Wareing, Olumide Olorunfemi, and Campbell Wallace in supporting roles. It follows Wendy as she embarks on a quest to find her brother Michael, who has been abducted by Peter Pan and Tinker Bell.
The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU), also known as the Poohniverse, is a British film series and shared universe of independent slasher horror films. It was conceived and created by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, and produced by the filmmaker's Jagged Edge Productions film studio. The films center around characters from children's media reimagined as murderous villains.
Pinocchio: Unstrung is an upcoming British independent slasher film directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, written by Matt Leslie, and produced by Frake-Waterfield and Scott Jeffrey. It is the fifth installment in The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU) and serves as a horror retelling of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Scott Chambers is a British actor and film producer. He played Richard in the 2015 film Chicken. He also portrayed Christopher Robin in the 2024 film Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, replacing Nikolai Leon from the first film. He is credited as Chambers for his role as an actor and as Jeffrey for his role as a producer for the latter film.
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