By Nate Parker | Film | February 9, 2023
Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s micro-budget horror movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey seems well on its way to success and he has no plans on slowing down. Blood and Honey doesn’t open globally until February 15 but has already earned nearly $1 million during its run in Mexico. Interest in this twist on the now public domain characters is high, and Frake-Waterfield recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he intends to put other childhood classics through the same wringer.
“The idea is that we’re going to try and imagine they’re all in the same world, so we can have crossovers,” he says. “People have been messaging saying they really want to see Bambi versus Pooh.”
Bambi Versus Pooh sounds like a truly disturbing German porn I want no part in. Along with everyone’s favorite fawn Frake-Waterfield also intends to create an alternate take on Peter Pan.
” “All the characters are meant to be really innocent, and when you think of Tinker Bell, she’s this sweet, cute little fairy. But we’re going to make her heavily obese and recovering from drugs.”
Yeah.
Movies that mess with our childhood fantasies are a great idea, but so far it sounds to me like the same sort of surface-level cleverness that Mindy Kaling thinks works on Velma. “Tinkerbell was tiny; let’s make her fat! Bambi was hunted; he’ll be the hunter!” In the original story and Disney movie, Tinkerbell is already a murderous little psychopath who tried to kill Wendy several times. I can see how the story would work, in theory, but bragging that your big idea is to make the fairy overweight feels less like a plot point and more an opportunity to point and laugh at the fat girl with wings. I just know his brilliant idea is that she’ll be too heavy to fly, and I’m already tired thinking of it.
We’ll soon get our chance to see if Frakes-Waterfield’s ideas are as good as he thinks. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey opens globally in a week, and with over 1,500 screens set aside in the US alone, it’ll surely be playing at a theater near you.