Low-budget horror film “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” made headlines again recently when a Miami teacher reportedly put on the film for his fourth-grade class with nearly half an hour of the movie screened before it was turned off.
Variety spoke with director and co-writer Rhys Waterfield about the incident, calling what happened “crazy” and how the film makes it clear from the outset that “there is no way you can mistake it for a child’s film”.
He says he doesn’t know how it “went on that long” and says “hopefully we haven’t ruined these kids’ childhoods”. He also used the opportunity to talk up the upcoming sequel in which he says “everything’s stepped up massively”.
That includes a body count which includes over 30 deaths, more than three times that of the first film. That’s reflected in the budget which has seen an increase of over tenfold.
The new film also includes the character of Tigger who enters the public domain on January 1st 2024 with the film opening a month later. In terms of release, he says the film is well into post-production right now:
“We’ve finished principal photography and the film is currently in the post-production stages. I’m tidying up the edit and we’ve got various departments working on it in terms of the music, sound, grade and animation, VFX, all of that stuff.”
The film is on track to release on February 14th next year.
