The director of the Winnie The Pooh horror film has received death threats for his adaption of the beloved children’s stories.
The director of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, says a number of people are outraged over his treatment of the characters. People have even issued threats towards his life.
“Look, this is mental,” Frake-Waterfield told the AFP. “I’ve had petitions to stop it. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had people saying they called the police.”
Frake-Whitfield is one of the first in Hollywood to take advantage of the expiration on the copyright to A.A. Milne books, which until recently had been held by Disney. Hence, his particular take on the beloved children’s characters.
Under US law, copyrights expire 95 years after a work is first published. The first “Winnie-the-Pooh” book came out in 1926.
The first images of Blood and Honey, in which a sinister, human-sized Pooh and Piglet hovered menacingly behind a young woman relaxing in a hot tub, quickly went viral last year. And the film’s trailer has confirmed that it’s anything but a child-friendly film (see below).
The film has already hit cinemas in Mexico, where it has made nearly $1 million in two weeks. This has some industry analysts already tipping it to become one of the most profitable films of all time.
Frake-Waterfield originally hoped his film “might do a mini theatrical run in certain areas.” However, he now believes it could achieve the highest “budget-to-box office ratio” since “Paranormal Activity,” the $15,000 film that launched a near $1 billion franchise over a decade ago.
“I really believed in the idea. Other people didn’t… and now it’s doing all right,” he joked.
‘Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey’ is due to be released on in the UK on March 10.