Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey Director On Inspiration & Casting

To say Winnie The Pooh is one of the most beloved figures in children’s literature would be an understatement. Created by A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard in 1924 originally as Edward Bear in “When We Were Very Young” to the current incarnation, everyone knows in 1926. While Milne was open to licensing the character, Disney acquired exclusive rights to the character in 1953, expanding the franchise to new heights until Milne’s U.S. copyright entered the public domain at the end of 2021, which was when writer and filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield took advantage of the opportunity and turned it into Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which takes Pooh (Craig David Dowsett) and his best friend Piglet (Chris Cordell) go on a murderous rampage in search for a new source of food after Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) abandons them for college. Frake-Waterfield spoke to Bleeding Cool about pitching the horror film, avoiding to conflict with Disney’s version, inspiration, and casting.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey – Humble Beginnings

BC: What went into the planning for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey?

Frake-Waterfield: Back in February 2022, I realized it was possible when [Winnie the Pooh] came into the public domain, and you could basically do what you want with it. This could be an amazing horror movie because there are so many ghouls, werewolves, and vampires. This is something different that sparks my interest straight away. We approached ITN [Studios] and said, “Do you guys want to make a good ‘Winnie the Pooh’ horror film and co-finance it together? They were like, “Let’s do it.” Straightaway, I wanted to get on board with directing it because it had a lot of potential and someone else wrote the script. When I reviewed it, there were major problems in this script because it was using elements there weren’t out of the public domain. For example, Pooh Sticks game and Tigger, you can’t have these elements because they belong to Disney.

I rewrote the whole story starting from scratch again with my limited time in the space of a week. Seven weeks after that, I was directing it while putting together the look of the monsters, locations, and what scenes we were going to like the death scenes. There were also props and a lot of different spaces along with wearing a lot of hats. It went mad and blew up back in May. From that point, we knew we had a winner on our hands, and we started to put a little bit more money into getting some reshoots done getting some cooler scenes and making sure the film was tight, and it was solid overall. It was something we were happy for people to have a theatrical experience. I’m excited.

Was there any external inspiration to help reimagine this into what it became? There was another reimagined IP out there, like the Banana Splits since it also became a horror movie.

Not any retellings. I didn’t take any inspiration. I didn’t even know about that ‘Banana Splits’ thing until after it was filmed, and someone sent it to me. I still haven’t even watched it. I love horror, and there were films that stuck in my mind. I was like, “How can I introduce some of those elements in there, some of it in a satirical and fun way? The main ones are ‘Wrong Turn,’ ‘The Strangers,’ ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Halloween.’ They were some of the key horrors I used as references and introduced elements into the whole experience.

What went into casting?

Casting was actually quite difficult because not many people had the belief in the film. They thought it was just going to bomb because it’s such a strange concept, and everyone wants a bit of a classy CV, and they want things to be more grounded, serious horror, and more character-driven. When you propose to someone that you want them to be in a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ horror movie, and he’s going to be six and a half foot with a machete, they think this is an absolute joke [laughs]. They don’t want to do it. I had a lot of struggle was with both cast and crew in order to get people on board with this to the point where someone was hired three days before filming because someone dropped out. These challenges made it hard to find people who were enthusiastic and believed in the movie. In some elements I was looking at, like with Pooh and Piglet, I had to fight for how I wanted them to appear. Pooh was always taller than Piglet. He’s more of the leader, so I wanted to have that same dynamic in the movie. In the casting for Winnie-the-Pooh, I always wanted it to be someone tall, who’s a bit more imposing, someone bigger, and a bit overweight. Not that Craig was, as the actor in it [laughs], but that was my mentality going into it, and he was going to be a bit more like a Michael Myers vibe. Craig was brought on board for Winnie, and whereas Piglet, I wanted him to be shorter and stockier, and he’s more of like the follower. Pooh tells him what to do, and Piglet is more the grunt. He’s a shorter, stockier brute, which is why I got Chris Cordell involved because he fits that bill.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which also stars Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, Amber Doig-Thorne, Danielle Ronald, and Natasha Tosini is available in theaters.