This is because copyright has only expired for A.A. Milne's original story which features a 'Winnie-the-Pooh' character markedly different to the modern 'Winnie the Pooh' we are used to seeing today – and that portrait of Winnie is owned by Disney.
Well, the studio had no choice. That's because the 1926 storybook, titled Winnie-the-Pooh, which introduced the titular character, passed into the public domain at the start of 2022, voiding its copyright, and thus Disney's media exclusivity over the character.
Walt Disney Co. has controlled the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh since 1961 and kept depictions of Milne's talking animals true to the spirit of the family-friendly material. The copyright expired in January 2022. Since then, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends have been available to the public for other purposes.
By 2022, the original Winnie-the-Pooh book entered into the public domain in the United States, since it had been 95 years since the story was first published. While Disney retains certain rights to their derivative works, the company no longer holds exclusive rights to the characters in the US.
In-between the release of the 1926 Winnie-the-Pooh and this novel, Milne and Shepard released Now We Are Six. The release comprised a collection of poems, including some that featured the Pooh characters. While writing this novel, Milne decided that he wanted to end the series as Christopher Robin was getting older.
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Why isn t Tigger in Blood and Honey?
Despite being one of the most prominent characters in the source material, Tigger wasn't a part of the original Blood and Honey. The reason, as writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield told us earlier this year, was that Tigger wasn't a part of the public domain when the first movie was in production.
Disney's decision not to sue Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey shows how significant the movie is and challenges their reputation for protecting their intellectual property.
Why is Disney allowing Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey?
That means that Milne's original story, as well as illustrator E.H. Shepard's drawings of Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Eeyore, and Christopher Robin, all became fair game for any and all types of adaptations following the end of the 95-year copyright protection term.
According to US copyright law, the rights for a character expire 95 years after the publication of the original work. Disney will lose the Mickey Mouse copyright for Steamboat Willie in 2024, since the short animated film was produced and distributed in 1928.
Thanks to copyright term extensions over the years, Disney still owns the rights for Milne's books and characters published after 1926 — including Tigger — as well as later materials published by the company using Milne's characters.
Disney acquired the copyright to Winnie the Pooh books and its characters in 1961. The characters first appeared in books by A.A. Milne in 1926, and under the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, a company's copyright is protected for 95 years after its first publication.
Will Disney ever make another Winnie the Pooh movie?
The release date for Blood and Honey 2 is tentatively set for February 2024, less than a year after the first film's release. It's time to head back to the Hundred Acre Wood. A sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is on the way because audience demand was apparently that high.
In this adaption, Piglet alongside his closest friends Pooh, Owl, Rabbit and Tigger become barbaric serial killers after being abandoned by Christopher Robin, forcing them to devour their friend Eeyore. Piglet would assist Pooh in kidnapping, torturing and murdering anyone who enters Hundred Acre Woods.
However, Christopher left after he entered college. Without him around to feed them, and with the arrival of winter, the creatures went into starvation. In order to survive, they settled on killing and eating Eeyore, which developed in them a hatred for humanity.
Since Disney acquired the rights to the original Pooh, the bear with a rumbly tummy has starred in feature films, direct-to-tv videos, and television shows. You can go to Walt Disney World and ride on Pooh-themed rides.
The complete absence of Owl and Rabbit suggests they escaped The Hundred Acre Wood to avoid Pooh and Piglet. Pooh and Piglet were traumatized, and it turned them violent, but their actions could have had the opposite effect on Owl and Rabbit to make them want to escape.
Rating & Content Info. Violence: There are frequent scenes of people being stabbed, bludgeoned, whipped, beaten, and cut. A character's head is crushed under a car. A woman is fed into a woodchipper.
Is Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey a low budget movie?
The first movie was made possible by Winnie the Pooh entering the public domain. Waterfield and Jagged Edge Productions made the film on a shoestring budget of less than $100,000.
Tigger: ADHD. Tigger is always seen bouncing and can never stay in one place for a long period of time. Kanga: Social Anxiety Disorder. She is very overprotective of her son, and she would never let her son make his own decisions because of her overprotectiveness.
Piglet is a fictional character, whose author envisioned him as a boy. He could have envisioned the same character as a girl, but for his own reasons chose the other way. There were no prohibitions on the author to choose one way or the other.
It seems the full answer to what happened to Owl and Rabbit won't be given until Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2. However, since only Pooh and Piglet are seen as serial killers, it appears that Owl and Rabbit escaped the Hundred Acre Wood before the 2023 horror movie's events.
Why is Tigger not in the Winnie-the-Pooh theme song?
When the original song was written, Tigger did not appear in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, hence his exclusion from the song. In the 2011 Winnie the Pooh film, Tigger was added in the lyric, "and Kanga, and little Roo (and Tigger too!)"
