Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey director and co-writer Rhys Frake-Waterfield says it’s “crazy” that a class of fourth graders were accidentally shown a portion of the movie.
On October 2, 2023, a Florida teacher accidentally showed a class of fourth graders approximately 20 to 30 minutes of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a 2023 horror movie featuring characters from A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard’s Winnie-the-Pooh novels.
“Last week, a video was mistakenly shown by a teacher during indoor lunch. Only the first 20 minutes of the movie were played. During those first 20 minutes, there was a scary scene that was shown. At that point, the teacher turned off the video,” the Miami school’s headteacher, Vera Hirsh, said in a statement. “Parents were reassured that the school has followed all school district policies and procedures in response to the incident and will continue to support the students’ safety and well-being on a daily basis.”
Speaking with Variety, Waterfield was asked for his reaction to the movie being mistakenly shown to children.
“It’s mad, isn’t it? I think it’s crazy. Because when you watch the film there is no way you can mistake it for a child’s film, literally in the first 10 minutes, crazy stuff’s happening. And [the characters] look scary. So I don’t know how — because they said it went on 20 to 30 minutes — I don’t know how it went on that long. I don’t know if the teacher put it on and just walked out and left them or if the kids tricked them or something. Hopefully we haven’t ruined these kids’ childhoods.”
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is coming
A sequel to Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which only had a budget of $100,000 and made $5.2 million at the worldwide box office, is currently in the works.
“In comparison to the first film everything’s stepped up massively,” Waterfield said of the sequel “It’s a horror film. A lot of the times people are going there for the death scenes and for those elements and we’ve really upped the ante. I think the last time I did a count there was over 30 deaths in the movie, which is quite substantial compared to most movies. I think that’s at least over three times what the first film had and there’s various massacres and stuff. So there’s a lot of blood and a lot of gore.
