Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 director Rhys Frake-Waterfield revealed that the larger budget has allowed for more than 30 kills
Made on a budget of less than $100,000, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (watch it HERE) earned more than $6 million during its global release earlier this year. Frake-Waterfield is now in the midst of working on a sequel that has a substantially larger budget (more than ten times the budget of the first movie, in fact) – and during a conversation with Variety, the filmmaker revealed that the larger budget has enabled him to pack more than thirty kills into this follow-up!
A.A. Milne’s 1926 children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh and the characters in it lapsed into the public domain at the start of last year, and that’s how Frake-Waterfield was able to make these movies happen, no permission required. In the build-up to the release of the first movie, the filmmaker explained to Variety that Pooh and Piglet (go) on a rampage after being abandoned by a college-bound Christopher Robin. “Christopher Robin is pulled away from them, and he’s not [given] them food, it’s made Pooh and Piglet’s life quite difficult. Because they’ve 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.”
Frake-Waterfield said, “In comparison to the first film everything’s stepped up massively. It’s a horror film. A lot of the times people are going there for the death scenes and for those elements and we’ve really upped the ante. I think the last time I did a count there was over 30 deaths in the movie, which is quite substantial compared to most movies. I think that’s at least over three times what the first film had and there’s various massacres and stuff. So there’s a lot of blood and a lot of gore.“
While Winnie used whatever weapons he could get his hands on in the first movie, in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 he’ll have a signature weapon: a bear trap. One murder sequence Frake-Waterfield is really looking forward to letting the audience see involves Winnie and Owl going after a group of girls in a motor home.
The higher budget also allowed for a redesign of the Winnie the Pooh costume. This time it has fur instead of being latex. Working with the fur proved to be challenging, but it sounds like the added difficulty was worth it. As the director explained, “It was very hard. Because we’ve really pushed the boat as much as we can and it was a very difficult shoot. And elements like that, like having fur on the creatures, it does add an extra level of complexity. For continuity, if you’re going in between when they’re soaked in blood and they’re not soaked in blood, it is harder for those guys to clean them off. But it actually adds a lot, especially on close ups, when you see all of fur and the dimensions to it. It doesn’t just look like latex and rubber, it makes it feel more real.“
Matt Leslie, writer/producer of Summer of 84, wrote the screenplay for the sequel, working from a story he crafted with Frake-Waterfield. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but it has been said that this time “Pooh and friends will be leaving the 100 Acre Wood to take their fight to the quiet community of Ashdown“.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is heading toward a February 14, 2024 release – and since the popular Tigger character becomes public domain in January of 2024, he is joining his pals Winnie, Piglet, and Owl in this film.
Are you looking forward to seeing the murder and mayhem of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/winnie-kills/
