Winnie the Pooh Is Getting His First Horror Movie

Never go into the Hundred Acre Wood alone…

After decades and decades of delighting audiences of all ages with their simple tales of love and friendship, the Winnie the Pooh gang are now starring in … a horror film. Based on the images for the movie that are available on IMDb, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey features terrifying versions of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet hounding buxom women and assorted other innocents.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey director Rhys Waterfield told Variety that the film “will see Pooh and Piglet as ‘the main villains…going on a rampage.’” Christopher Robin, who is now college-aged, “is pulled away from them, and he’s not [given] them food. It’s made Pooh and Piglet’s life quite difficult.” I always knew there was something suspicious about how much Pooh liked honey.

The characters then “had to fend for themselves so much, they’ve essentially become feral … so they’ve gone back to their animal roots. They’re no longer tame: they’re like a vicious bear and pig who want to go around and try and find prey.” You can probably imagine what happens next just from the pictures.

Because A.A. Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh was written so long ago now, the characters have lapsed into the public domain, which means the former rights holders can no longer sue artists for using those characters in their own work. In the same way you don’t need to pay Shakespeare’s surviving relatives to mount a production of Hamlet, you can now make your own Winnie the Pooh movie.

It’s worth noting, though, that you can’t just make a Pooh film or show that looks or sounds like Disney’s version. While the original Pooh characters are in the public domain, 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which contains Disney’s iconic interpretations of the characters, is not. But I don’t think anyone is going to confuse Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey with the Disney version.