Rhys Frake-Waterfield is plotting a horror cinematic universe based on beloved children’s story characters that are in the public domain. He was the director of the recently released Winnie-the-Pooh horror movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (read our review HERE), and he’s in development on movies like Bambi: The Reckoning and Peter Pan: Neverland Nightmare. Since these characters are public domain, he doesn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to put a horrific twist on their stories. But if copyright wasn’t an issue, Frake-Waterfield would also like to make horror movies featuring characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Teletubbies.
Speaking with Collider, Frake-Waterfield said, “I’ve really been excited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lately because I think the story has a very kind of horrifying undertone anyway because it’s these half-human, half-turtles who live in the sewer who have a rat king who they follow, and then they come out of the sewer with weapons. [Laughs] It all just starts to link together to me. So I’d love to do that. I’d love to have them like down an alleyway cutting people up, feeding them to their rat king on pizza or something. I hope I can get the copyrights to that, but I don’t know if I can. … I want to do Teletubbies, too!“
The chances that he’ll get to use those characters are probably slim, but it’s good to know what’s on his mind.
A.A. Milne’s 1926 children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh and the characters in it lapsed into the public domain at the start of 2022. Frake-Waterfield explained to Variety that in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Pooh and Piglet (go) on a rampage after being abandoned by a college-bound Christopher Robin. “Christopher Robin is pulled away from them, and he’s not [given] them food, it’s made Pooh and Piglet’s life quite difficult. Because they’ve had to fend for themselves so much, they’ve essentially become feral. So they’ve gone back to their animal roots. They’re no longer tame: they’re like a vicious bear and pig who want to go around and try and find prey.”
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey stars Amber Doig-Thorne (Heropanti 2), Maria Taylor (Perfectly Frank), Danielle Ronald (Curse of Bloody Mary), May Kelly (Easter Killing), Natasha Tosini (The Butterfly Beat), Marcus Massey (The Gradual Approach of the Evening), Gillian Broderick (I’m Still Here), Richard Harfst (Cannibal Troll), Natasha Rose Mills (Accident Man), Paula Coiz (The Leprechaun’s Curse), Danielle Scott (Prototype), and Bao Tieu (Conjuring the Genie), with Craig David Dowsett (Alien Abduction) as Winnie the Pooh and Chris Cordell (Spider in the Attic) as Piglet.
Have you seen Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, and would you like to see Frake-Waterfield make horror movies based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Teletubbies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.