The public domain horror universe has reached its Avengers moment
The creators of low-budget slasher Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey are bringing your favorite childhood characters together in the most violent way possible
With Marvel on the decline, it comes as no surprise that something new is rising up to claim its throne—or at least trying to. But we’re also feeling pretty confident when we say that absolutely no one was asking for that thing to be the Twisted Childhood Universe, a.k.a. the public domain, I.P. driven gore-fest from the brilliant, or… something minds behind Razzie-sweeper Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey and its upcoming sequel, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2.
If you’re one of the freaks who gave the $50,000 “what if Winnie the Pooh stabbed people” slasher a whopping $5 million at the box office, you legally owe the rest of us an apology. Last February, production studios Jagged Edge and ITN announced that they would be spinning the hundred-acre horror into an entire dark fairy tale universe, with slated titles like Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, Pinocchio Unstrung, and Bambi: The Reckoning.
While all of those films are still to come in 2024, today the studios revealed that they were already plotting the inevitable team-up film: a blood-splattered nightmare called Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. Yes, the MCU allusion is intentional. “As horror fans, we would love an Avengers that is all villains,” Jagged Edge boss Scott Chambers told Variety. “It’d have Freddy Krueger, Jason, Halloween, Scream, all of those. Obviously that will never happen, but we can make it happen in our own little way, and that’s where this film has been born.”
As of this announcement, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Tigger, Piglet, The Mad Hatter and Sleeping Beauty will be joining Pooh and Bambi for their killing spree, which will see the “monsters” band together to eliminate any survivors from their previous films. But if that sounds a little too cutesy, “it’s a small world after all” for you, never fear! There will also apparently be dissension in the ranks, leading to “carnage within the group” and “epic sequences of monster vs. monster.” Phew!
Poohniverse will be directed by Rhys Jake-Waterfield, who also helmed Blood And Honeys 1 and 2. (“It’s really exciting,” he said.) The film will be released sometime in 2025. In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with Blood And Honey 2, out in theaters March 26.