Disney is known to buy big companies in order to make their very own company much bigger. This can prove that Disney owns a lot of characters from those industries that were bought off. Although, Disney sadly lost a set of characters on January 1st, 2022, which are the magical friends of Christopher Robins. In other words, Winnie the Pooh is no longer owned by Disney, due to expired copyrights, which means it is owned by the public and any company can use them, which is also called “Public Domain”. The design for Winnie the Pooh is still Disney’s property, but Winnie the Pooh in the old stories is free. Christopher Robin’s friends are mostly underrated, so it makes the more important characters more usable to the other industries. Especially since Tigger is still Disney’s and will be released to the public domain on January 1st, 2024. When the rights were taken away, already one company started to abuse the rights for their own needs. 

Jagged Edge Production, a London company, sadly took advantage of this and made Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey, a horror movie released on March 10, 2023. The movie did horrible from rotten tomatoes to IMDB, probably because the company is unknown and it felt like they wanted to make something before any other industry does. Sebastian Mora, a Disney fan, was asked, “Will there be a sequel to the horror movie?” He responded with, “No, I think another company with the right amount of money and passion”. This can just prove that being first to use the rights isn’t always a must, it takes time and effort to make masterpieces. 

Sadly, a sequel will get made for this monstrosity of a movie because it did so badly that the hatred for the movie ended up making the company millions. The movie had a budget of fewer than 100,000 dollars and in movie terms are not good, especially for casting. The horrible mask was even bought off at a prop store for 650 dollars and they somehow got away with adding red overalls, even though as stated previously, Disney’s design is still copyrighted. The budget however did increase, since so many people on Twitter decided to make memes, which caused the company more money. Jagged Edge Productions, does state that the sequel will have more blood and honey and will increase the budget by 5 times more. With the movie increasing budget, the media was already suspecting that Tigger would be in the sequel since it only takes months for him to be in the public domain. 

Public Domain will possibly do the most unexpected things to characters that were meant for children. Winnie the Pooh gets a horror movie, which then scars fans since they wouldn’t expect Winnie to unalive people. It can be the same for the Grinch, since in 2022 a horror movie called “A mean one” was made, which made the Grinch into a horror-type character. 

Disney will possibly no longer buy the rights back to Christopher Robin and their friends since most likely they will probably think it’s not worth the purchase and would rather focus on other work. Alan Alexander Milne was the creator of Christopher Robin’s friends which was created in 1926. It does kinda add up because supposedly to copyright rules it takes the author’s life and 70 years in order for it to be free. Almost 100 years of Disney owning Winnie the Pooh and sadly, the fun-loving character is now being taken advantage of by other companies, hope in the future that other industries try to make Winnie the Pooh more fun and loving because that is what children’s characters were meant to do, since the start and I don’t think you need Disney to make a masterpiece.