Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 to Have "Substantially Larger Budget"

It's not a knock on the film itself to say that viral hit Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey had a low budget. The film, which reports pointed toward costing somewhere in the $100k range, would go on to become a hit despite this and overwhelmingly negative reviews. Naturally work on a sequel began almost immediately and the follow-up is closer than we realize. According to The Hollywood Reporter, production company Premiere Entertainment is gearing up for filming on the new movie to start this fall, and they note the project will "include a substantially larger budget." The horror sequel took to Cannes and pre-sold its theatrical distribution in several international territories.

Filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield will return to write and direct the new movie, which doesn't have an official title just yet but is being called Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 all over. One can assume that the murderous bear and his pal Piglet will be back in the film, terrorizing another group of unsuspecting young adults that are just eager to take their clothes off and run through the woods. One character that fans should not expect to see in the movie is an evil version of Tigger. Despite Winnie the Pooh entering the public domain along with most of his Hundred Acre Wood neighbors, Tigger remains copyright protected for at least another year; Blood and Honey 3 however could eventually bring him around.

Frake-Waterfield has already teased intentions to take more characters that are notably from children and family entertainment, and which are now public domain, and make them into monsters in some form. Among those that he's considered include Bambi, Peter Pan, Thor, and others.

"The idea is that we're going to try and imagine they're all in the same world, so we can have crossovers," Frake-Waterfield previously said. "People have been messaging saying they really want to see Bambi versus Pooh...There are many, many, many other ideas out there which aren't tied to Disney. Loads of old fairytales and urban legends, concepts that are synonymous with your childhood, and they're the ones which I want to build up into a twisted alternative reality."

Despite its major financial success, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey landed on "100 Worst Movies of All-Time" list on Rotten Tomatoes, stuck on the list at #97 and sandwiched between Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) and Scary Movie V.