Winnie The Pooh Horror Movie Director Blames Marvel For Bad Reviews - Here's Why

"Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" director Rhys Frake-Waterfield said the reason movie critics lambasted his micro-budgeted horror film stemmed from their need to compare it to the blockbuster-budgeted films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

When "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" hit theaters in February 2023, it was smacked with a dismal 3% critic rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Among the most perplexing criticisms, Frake-Waterfield recalled for SFX, was how his $100,000 film that was shot over 10 days was being mentioned in the same breath as the MCU.

"When your film is out there like that, it literally gets directly compared to Marvel films, even though you're on 0.01% of their budget. We probably didn't have their catering budget!" the director explained. "They're substantially different. But because of the scale Winnie went to, a lot of the critics did almost like-for-like comparisons."

The negative reviews didn't appear to detract moviegoers from seeing "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey," as it earned $5.2 million at the worldwide box office. The numbers, naturally, justified Frake-Waterfield making the upcoming sequel, "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2."

While Rhys Frake-Waterfield thought some reviewers' comparisons of "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" to Marvel films were unfair, he said he has learned how to deal with criticism of his work. "To be honest, you've got to have a really, really thick skin to be a filmmaker because you get heavily, heavily criticized regardless of the means and the resources you have," he said.

Where the twisted adventures go after "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2" is anybody's guess. One idea Frake-Waterfield toyed with during his interview would be to combine the worlds of Winnie the Pooh and another famed book-turned-Disney-animated-classic — this time about an orphaned deer – that entered the public domain in 2022. "We need to see what the appetite is, but we could do some absolutely crazy stuff, like a crossover between Bambi and Winnie the Pooh," the director told the publication. "That could go incredibly mad. I need to sit down and think how mad we want to go with it! We could have Winnie riding Bambi!"

Frake-Waterfield could also conceivably do a horror film based on Steamboat Willie, who entered the public domain on January 1, 2024. However, it seems Steven LaMorte beat Frake-Waterfield to the punch, as he is slated to direct the darker take on Mickey Mouse's animated debut.