Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey

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An illustration by E. H. Shepard showing Piglet and Pooh walking in the snow.
An iconic illustration by E. H Shepard from the first Pooh book. This iconography has helped to make the Pooh stories recognizable worldwide.
In 2022, shortly after 1926’s Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain, filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield, whose earlier indie films received little attention, announced . By adapting the Pooh stories, Frake-Waterfield utilized their near-hundred year history and public recognition to garner immediate attention to his new production, highlighting the benefits that IP provides even in an area of filmmaking that is historically amenable to emerging filmmakers.

Since its release, critics and viewers alike have highlighted the deviation from the childhood source material through a gory slasher adaptation. These critiques are reasonable and definitely feel notable to viewers as a dead-eyed Pooh Bear and tusk-bearing Piglet eat Eeyore. However jarring the contrast of the adaptation to the source material may be, it does not undercut the value of the public domain. In creating this adaptation, it acts as a celebration of the public domain as a vehicle for whatsapp number database and other creatives to remix old works for their own creative and commercial benefit and not just the benefit of select corporate IP holders.

The Blood and Honey film is an adaptation that does not utilize the Pooh stories for much more than audience familiarity. It utilizes the public domain works primarily as a shock factor to attract audience attention. Generally it grafts the iconography of these stories onto an indie horror film that would remain fundamentally unchanged if all of the Pooh elements were stripped away. Beneath the surface of this iconography is a standard slasher film playing in the mold of what has come before.

A book cover stating "The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne with an illustration of Pooh.