Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey director responds to that 3% Rotten Tomatoes score, and teases Disney horror universe

Having kicked off the 'beloved childhood character turned murderous villain' fever that seems to be gripping Hollywood, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield's Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey shook up the horror genre in 2023. And despite its harsh critical reception, Pooh and Piglet will soon be back for round two...

When asked how he coped with the negative backlash, the director replied, "It's a really strange one for me." Frake-Waterfield tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features Dune 2 on the cover: "To be honest, you've got to have a really, really thick skin to be a filmmaker because you get heavily, heavily criticized regardless of the means and the resources you have."

The first bloodthirsty flick saw our once treasured Pooh Bear and Piglet transform into feral killers and terrorize Christopher Robin and his friends at a remote cabin. The film shocked audiences, landing a less-than-impressive 3% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the reasoning behind this low score may be down to the fact the film had a $100,000 budget and was shot in just 10 days. 

Frake-Waterfield explains, "When your film is out there like that, it literally gets directly compared to Marvel films, even though you're on 0.01% of their budget. We probably didn't have their catering budget!" The director continues, "They're substantially different. But because of the scale Winnie went to, a lot of the critics did almost like-for-like comparisons."

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has just hit theaters, and follows Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Tigger as they go on a murderous rampage through a quiet town. Frake-Waterfield reckons he won't stop there, either, as more classic Disney characters head into the public domain, such as Mickey Mouse, Bambi, and Pinocchio.

"We need to see what the appetite is, but we could do some absolutely crazy stuff, like a crossover between Bambi and Winnie the Pooh," Frake-Waterfield teases. "That could go incredibly mad. I need to sit down and think how mad we want to go with it! We could have Winnie riding Bambi!" Now, that would be a sight to behold. 

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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is out now in select theatres. The above is just a snippet of our interview, available in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Dune: Part Two on the cover and is available on newsstands from Wednesday, February 21. For even more from SFX, sign up to our newsletter, which delivers all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.