The movie “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” demonstrates the strength of the public domain

Winnie the Pooh trailer

It’s been a long time, but Winnie the Pooh is finally making a comeback. JAGGED EDGE PRODUCTIONS

The first trailer for the upcoming film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has been released, and it reveals that the once-lovable bear has become a vengeful, bloodthirsty monster ever since Christopher Robin left him behind.

The movie seems to be a fairly normal slasher picture, with a group of adolescent girls being frightened by two axe-wielding killers who appear to be wearing these silicone masks. The scene is seen in the trailer. It’s interesting to note that these two sickos are shown as the original Pooh and Piglet, despite the fact that they’ve aged and gone off the rails over the years.

This is only feasible due to the fact that the first Winnie-the-Pooh book written by A.A. Milne has finally entered the public domain, making it one of the most culturally significant tales to have lately been available without the restrictions of copyright. Since Disney first adapted the original novels into animated features many decades ago, the company has maintained ownership over the brand.

But these days, the Hundred Acre Wood has been relatively quiet, as the most recent Winnie the Pooh animated movie was released in 2011, and the live-action Christopher Robin movie was released in 2018; however, Disney still releases a steady stream of shows, books, and merchandise featuring Pooh and his friends.

Now, Milne’s first book has the potential to be made into a new animation to compete with Disney’s classic films, or it may be warped into a blood-spattered slasher flick, as is the case with Blood and Honey. Both of these possibilities are quite real.

Milne published multiple sequels to his original narrative, and those books haven’t yet reached the public domain; as a result, Tigger, who was introduced in the second book, is still Disney’s toy. However, there are still restrictions to this arrangement. Any new adaptation of Winnie the Pooh would have to adhere to the original book rather than Disney’s renditions of the characters, who remain firmly constrained by copyright law. This would be the case for any new version of the story.

Disney

Disney did a fantastic job adapting the novels; the tone of the original tales is very faithfully represented in the animated movies, and the voice actors were a wonderful fit for their roles. Although, over the course of time, the figure has been somewhat “Flanderized,” the books show a thinking and creative bear, with more on his mind than honey (there is also a Soviet animation of Winnie the Pooh that is worth viewing, since the visual style is considerably different).

It will be fascinating to watch where the Winnie the Pooh franchise goes from here, especially now that the first book is entirely available to adaptation. Those initial novels are shockingly humorous, intelligent, and heartbreaking (despite their age, my kids loved them).

It is always intriguing to observe how a famous figure may change over time as it is filtered through numerous interpretations. We see this kind of thing online all the time, despite copyright constraints, and it is fascinating every time.

This subversive turn into blood-spattered horror is actually a pretty frequent path for children’s characters; YouTube is packed with cute cartoons that have been warped into savage monsters. Over the course of the series, even a one-dimensional figure like Garfield evolved into a terrible Lovecraftian creature.

Winnie the Pooh is going to be reincarnated several times in the future, and Blood and Honey is only the beginning of it all.

for more entertainment click here