How Tigger Could Appear In Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2
The horror spin on the classic children's book characters, "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey," shocked fans online upon its announcement and was one of the most talked about horror movies of the year. Like the successful Fathom Events release of "Terrifier 2" in October 2022, "Blood and Honey" saw a similar release in February 2023 and was a huge success for ITN Distribution. Talks of a sequel immediately sprung up after the buzzy title made a killing at the box office during its limited release. The film's director Rhys Frake-Waterfield has shared several ideas he's had for the follow-up, and one of those ideas includes the one and only Tigger character from the Pooh universe.
Much like Pooh and Piglet before him, Tigger as a character will enter the public domain in 2024. Therefore, he will be free to use in a film without having to pay for permission for the use of his visage. Fortunately for the creative team behind "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2," the sequel is aiming to be released in 2024, timing out perfectly for Tigger's inclusion. If the sequel wants to keep the killers as a duo, Tigger could replace Piglet as Pooh's accomplice in the mayhem as Piglet didn't quite survive the last killing spree. However, Frake-Waterfield said that Piglet can't die in the franchise, so we could be seeing a trio of maniacal anthropomorphic animals in the next film.
Blood and Honey had to be very careful with how it depicted its villains to avoid lawsuits
"Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" was able to use Pooh Bear and Piglet as characters in the film due to their copyright being up, entering them into the public domain. As such, anyone could make a film featuring the pop culture icons as long as they don't resemble copyrighted versions of the characters such as the popular Disney versions. "Blood and Honey" director Rhys Frake-Waterfield took swift advantage of the copyright ending with the film, timing the production for exactly when he legally could make and release the movie with the characters being available. Christopher Robin also fell into the public domain before the release of the first movie, leading to his appearance (and demise) in the first act.
Frake-Waterfield knew that he had to skirt some legal red tape in order to get his film made. Disney is notorious for having a trigger finger for suing at the first sign of any infringements on their intellectual property. So the filmmaker had to avoid certain things like Poohsticks and Pooh's red shirt along with characters like Kanga and Roo. The director even opted to have Pooh remain silent so the film wouldn't get in trouble for having him say something from the Disney brand such as "Oh bother."
Unlike some of the specific Disney-created aspects of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger does appear in the original Pooh stories, which is why his copyright is ending so close to when Pooh's and Piglet's ended. Fans should fully expect to see Tigger in the upcoming film, even though nothing official has been announced at this point. Now we're just curious to see what Tigger will look like as a terrifying monster.