Against the Winnie-the-Pooh Slasher Movie

Twitter was aflutter, as Twitter tends to be, when news dropped on Wednesday that A.A. Milne’s beloved teddy bear character, Winnie-the-Pooh, would be returning to the big screen. As a horror movie villain. Who hunts and eats humans. In a movie titled—hand to God, this is the real name—Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.

The film is not being made by Disney—though the corporation is perfectly okay with a murderous Winnie-the-Pooh doppelgänger—instead being produced by an independent filmmaker who is taking advantage of the fact that the copyright for the original Milne-authored Winnie-the-Pooh lapsed five months ago. (There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose strict copyright laws, every single one of which is rebutted by the phrase “Winnie-the-Pooh slasher movie.”)

Details about Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey are sparse at the moment, with only a few horrifying pictures and plot details currently out. But here’s what we know thus far: Abandoned by a college-bound Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet turn feral, kill and eat their friend Eeyore, and begin hunting humans for sport in grisly fashion. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is the most disturbing use of Pooh intellectual property since the “Heffalumps and Woozles” song.

The fact that this is being done to the Winnie-the-Pooh character at all is saddening. The fact that it’s being done with the original stories is even worse. The Milne Pooh tales are literary and whimsical in a way that doesn’t fully translate to the Disney cartoons, making this monstrous reinterpretation of Pooh Bear feel all the more like a transgression against innocence.