NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

THE CREATORS OF THE POOHNIVERSE ARE BACK TO TWIST MORE CHILDHOOD TALES WITH PETER PAN'S NEVERLAND NIGHTMARE

- ROBBIE DUNLOP

ONCE UPON A TIME IN 2023, independent British film studio Jagged Edge Productions unleashed Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey on a public still mighty fond of AA Milne's good-natured, honey-loving teddy bear, thank you very much.

“It was made in seven days on £20,000 and then, honestly, things just went crazy,” laughs Scott Jeffrey, co-founder of Jagged Edge with Rhys Frake-Waterfield. After going viral on social media, the copyright-dodging slasher movie, originally set for a small-scale VOD release, burst quite unexpectedly onto cinema screens around the world.

“Whereas with the sequel, Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey 2, we had £320,000 which is still, like, crap, but it's a lot more. I'm very good at managing budgets,” Jeffrey adds. “I don't waste any money; every single penny is on screen. I think that all just comes from never having had any money for films in the past!”

He has once again plundered the public domain (and the imagination of author JM Barrie) for follow-up scary-tale Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare. Famously, the copyright to the original 1904 play - Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up - is held by Great Ormond Street Hospital.

However, in his capacity as writer and director of Neverland Nightmare, Jeffrey has been able to circumvent the “messy” rights situation by spinning the story around the 1911 novel Peter And Wendy, the copyright of which expired 50 years after Barrie's death, in 1987. “There are a couple of territories in which we probably can't release; certain laws are a bit different,” he notes.

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