Winnie The Pooh, Pinocchio, Peter Pan and more are set to appear in Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, a horror film from the makers of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey. More on the story below.
It’s not exactly a secret that Marvel has been struggling recently with diminishing (but still sizable) box office returns, troubled productions and less-than-great reviews for its films. A more cynical writer might say that it’s about time Marvel was dethroned as the ruler of cinematic universes.
It will certainly face some stiff competition from the makers of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, who are now setting up their own cinematic universe.
A new film called Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, has been announced, and is set to be released in 2025 according to Variety. The film will see a team-up between familiar heroes such as Winnie The Pooh, Bambi, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Tigger, Piglet, The Mad Hatter and Sleeping Beauty.
Naturally, it’ll all be done with a gnarly, gory, horror twist.
The news comes as a sequel to Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, simply titled Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2, heads to US cinemas on 26th March.
Standalone films for many of the characters have also been planned and will be released this year before concluding with Poohniverse. Those include Bambi: The Reckoning, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Pinocchio Unstrung.
The approach mirrors Marvel’s release plan leading up to 2012’s The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble here in the UK). While Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey didn’t quite rake in Marvel-like numbers at the box office, it did well for itself. The film grossed $5.2 million at the global box office and with a budget of $50 000, it’s one heck of a success story, so we can’t really blame Jagged Edge Productions and ITN Studios for wanting to strike while the iron’s hot.
Rhys Jake-Waterfield, who helmed both Winnie The Pooh films, will also return to helm Poohniverse. “We’ve got access to all these concepts so it’s like a self-contained bubble and we can do what we want with them,” the director said. “So yeah, it’s really exciting.”
Not many plot details are available for Poohniverse, but it will see the cuddly-characters-turned-serial-killers take on survivors from the previous films.
“As horror fans, we would love an Avengers that is all villains,” explained actor-producer Scott Chambers, also known as Scott Jeffrey, who runs Jagged Edge together with Jake-Waterfield. “It’d have Freddy Krueger, Jason, Halloween, Scream, all of those. Obviously that will never happen, but we can make it happen in our own little way, and that’s where this film has been born.”
No specific date has been given for Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, but we’ll keep you updated on that.
