10 Recent Movies That Reignited A Dying Franchise
2. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2
When Marvel Studios kicked off the shared universe trend in Hollywood with the MCU in 2008, Warner Bros., Universal, and Legendary all followed suit with the DCEU, the Dark Universe, and the MonsterVerse - all with varying success.
What no one would have seen coming was the creation of the Twisted Childhood Universe. When Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, Rhys Frake-Waterfield produced the incredibly low-budget horror movie, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. Unsurprisingly, the film was universally panned, but it made a decent profit off such a small production, and the sequel was greenlit at the same time as announcing the plans for a shared universe commonly referred to as the Poohniverse.
It may have only been the second in the series, but Blood and Honey 2 pumped life into the shared universe that would have died on the spot had this sequel not been a hit. Everything was bigger. The budget went from $100,000 to $1 million, the critical response was far better, and it edged out the original in terms of box office numbers, bringing in $7.5 million.
Things could have gone the way of the Dark Universe, but thanks to the success of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (whoever thought they'd read that sentence), the franchise has already been added to by Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, with more twisted tales based around the likes of Bambi, Pinocchio, and potentially more yet to come.