The Hundred Acre Wood looks a lot different these days

The first trailer for Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a slasher horror film based on the beloved A.A. Milne characters, dropped yesterday – and it’s not quite as rosy as our childhood memories.

The plot revolves around Pooh and Piglet, who were forced to survive years without food as Christopher Robin grew up and forgot about them. Then, out of the blue, ‘ole Chris comes back to the Hundred Acre Wood to visit… and the “increasingly hungry and feral” Pooh and Piglet go on a rampage.

As you can probably guess, this wasn’t exactly approved by Disney. But there’s really not much they can do about it.

• As of January 1, 2022, A.A. Milne’s first Winnie-the-Pooh book is in the public domain. Meaning no licensing fees need to be paid, or creative approval garnered, if anyone wants to build upon the world or its characters. (Fun fact: Tigger wasn’t introduced until the second book, meaning he’s still protected under copyright law.)

🍿 Big picture: We’ll probably see some other… *interesting*... takes on traditional characters over the next few years. 400,000+ works entered the public domain this past January, one of the largest amounts since the start of copyright law, including Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Felix Salten's Bambi, and Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

And other popular works are coming soon. Disney’s Steamboat Willie, which contains the first-ever appearance of Mickey Mouse, enters the public domain in 2024.