How a beloved children’s character became the villain of one of 2023’s must-see slashers.
Filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield grew up loving Winnie-the-Pooh.
“I reckon everyone did,” says the 31-year-old Brit.
‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’.ITN Studios/Jagged Edge Productions
“I remember getting played a lot of the cartoons and stuff when I was younger.
He’s appeared throughout my life.
These days, Frake-Waterfield has a new reason to feel fondly toward the honey-loving creation of writer A.
‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’.ITN Studios/Jagged Edge Productions
A. Milne and illustrator E. H. Shepard.
After the project was announced last year, the micro-budgeted, star-free film became a viral sensation.
Last month,Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honeyopened in Mexico, where the film cracked the box-office top five.
‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’.ITN Studios/Jagged Edge Productions
The movie will be released in nearly 1500 theaters come Feb. 15.
“It’s been getting this demand from all these other territories,” says the director.
“I’ve been getting messages from China, Russia, everywhere, asking for it.”
Director Rhys Frake-Waterfield.Jaime Nogales/Medios y Media/Getty Images
“I worked in corporate strategy for an energy company,” he says.
“I used to work on making the economic case for nuclear power stations.
I did it eight or nine years.
In 2020, Frake-Waterfield founded Jagged Edge Productions with another young filmmaker, Scott Jeffrey.
The journey to the Hundred Acre Wood (a.k.a.
I’m a massive horror fan.
When I knew that was in the public domain, suddenly the sparks started flying.
I was like, I’d love to see that.
I’d love to see Winnie-the-Pooh as a horror.
So we thought, okay, let’s just go for it.”
Christopher has to go to college and he’s no longer able to help his young friends survive.
The process of eating their friend has made them really mentally twisted.
And it becomes a bloodbath.”
“I tried to confirm I didn’t go anywhere near Disney,” says Frake-Waterfield.
“Disney have their their own interpretation of Winnie the Pooh.
And I’m pretty sure that’s what we’ve got now.
The filmmaker admits it was initially tough to assemble a cast prepared to fulfill his vision.
“It was actually really hard,” Frake-Waterfield recalls.
And they were like, ‘What’s the concept?’
I told them and they were like, ‘No, I don’t want to do it.’
[Laughs] It was the same with some of the crew.
They don’t know if it’s going to do that well or if it just looks super silly.
But I was really passionate about it.
“When I was casting for Pooh, I wanted him quite tall,” says Frake-Waterfield.
That’s how I wanted Pooh to come across in this.”
“We did try and take it all very seriously,” he says.
“That was one of the directions I gave the actors.
“Yeah, it was really surreal,” says the director.
“It went viral just based on the images.
But we did try and make this as cinematic as possible.
Overnight, it just went crazy.
I got woken up about four a.m. by the other co-producer.
He was like, ‘Look at your phone!’
Endless stories had been posted about it.
I was like, Oh my God, this has gone crazy.
We released the trailer and people were like, this actually looks good.
So from there we thought, Okay, let’s do some reshoots, make this even better.”
That further investment was justified when Frake-Waterfield and his collaborators traveled to Mexico for the movie’s world premiere.
“They went full-out,” he says.
Just loads of really strange but cool marketing approaches.
There was a press junket, red carpet.
So Winnie-the-Pooh is big in Mexico?
“Pooh is everywhere,” he says.
It just made me think, this is literallyeverywhere, this concept.
Everybody knows what Winnie-the-Pooh is.”
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honeyhits theaters Feb. 15.
Tickets can be purchased online atFathom Eventsor at participating theater box offices.
For a complete list of theater locations, visit theFathom Eventswebsite.
See the trailer forWinnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honeybelow and exclusively watch a clip from the movie above.
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