Everyone's favorite murderous pooh bear is coming back for more blood and honey — on the heels of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2's box office success, the producers have announced that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 is already in the works.
Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Scott Chambers, the creative minds behind horror movie powerhouse Jagged Edge Productions, announced to Variety that the third installment in the surprise breakout scream fest will have “a bigger budget than the previous films and will introduce new characters from the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, including Rabbit, the heffalumps and the woozles.”
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is currently in American movie theaters as part of its 3-day Fathom Events theatrical run. The first sadistic Winnie the Pooh film premiered just over a year ago to laughs and head-scratching puzzlement, but somehow quickly entered the cultural zeitgeist a la other trashy horror movies such as The Human Centipede.
Whether its success was ironic or genuine remains to be determined, but box office receipts don't lie, and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey ended up earning $5.2 million worldwide from a production budgeted at under $50,000.
As of Thursday, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is in the third day of its 3-day theatrical run, so it's a little soon to gauge it's profitability, but producers must have an inside scoop that the film is on track to make a profit once again with the quick trilogy announcement.
The sequel is rumored to have a budget around 10 times higher than the original, and also enjoyed relatively better reviews with it currently boasting a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is quite a step up considering the original Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey‘s dumpster fire of a Rotten Tomatoes score was 3%.
That being said, the higher score may also represent film critics' warming to what is fast becoming a new horror genre. When the beloved childhood pooh bear created by author A.A. Milne was turned into a crazed serial killer with a sledgehammer, it took a little getting used to and wasn't exactly viewed as high art.
It still isn't, but Jagged Edge is certainly trying their darnedest to make the children's-character-turned-slasher-movie-hero a thing by really leaning in to the world. The horror producers announced last week that A.A. Milne's literary creations and other classic Disney characters are now giving birth to an entire “Poohniverse” — a compilation of beloved childhood characters turned evil.
Actually dubbed the Twisted Childhood Universe, the MCU-like saga will build to the 2025 release of
Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, which will feature blood-thirsty versions of Bambi, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Tigger, Piglet, The Mad Hatter and Sleeping Beauty.
It's not yet known where Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 fits in to that timeline, but leading up to the Poohniverse will also be the horror origin stories of Bambi, Peter Pan and Pinocchio.
Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, and Pinocchio Unstrung are all currently in the works for Jagged Edge Productions.
So, for those who can't wait for the nightmares that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 is sure to induce, sounds like there will be plenty of other entries in the genre hitting theaters soon.
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