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If you grew up with Winnie the Pood, Blood and Honey will ruin your childhood memories.
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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is now available to stream in Aotearoa, which got us at Newsable thinking about the legalities of turning a beloved children’s book character in to, in this case, a horror movie slasher.
In turns out the estate of author A.A Milne had nothing to do with the new movie, as the first Pooh book, which was published in 1926, entered the public domain last year. That allowed Blood and Honey writer and director Rhys Frake-Waterfield to get to work on the script for his film.
On today’s episode, film and TV lawyer at Sinclair Black law firm in Auckland, Melanie Chuter, joins us to explain how Frake-Waterfield was able to legally turn the beloved A.A Milne character in to a slasher horror star.
Here’s the transcript of the interview that’s been edited to make it more readable.
Have you heard about this Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey movie before?
I had heard of it and I was actually talking to my son about it yesterday because he’s a Winnie the Pooh fan. He’s 11 and he’s grown up with Winnie the Pooh. We were talking about sampling music, we were talking about songs, and then we start talking about copyright. I said, ‘there’s this crazy thing that’s happened with Winnie the Pooh’. So I explained to him, and he was shocked, he was like, ‘mum, what are they doing’?
What do you think about it? Do you feel that way as well because my producer Philippa thinks this is absolutely sacrilegious.
Well, I love Winnie the Pooh as well, I’ve grown up with it, my children have grown up with it but I totally respect the creativity and the nous to go and do this. So like every lawyer, I can see both sides of this.
When I first heard about this my first reaction was wow A.A Milne’s estate up for anything because obviously they would have had to approve to this Winnie the Pooh slasher horror, but then I learned that in fact his estate would not have had any say in this whatsoever. Can you please explain why?
That’s because A.A.Milne died a long time ago (in 1956). So somebody who creates a piece of work can control what happens to that work, they have what’s called the copyright. They can decide who gets to use it and how it gets used, but it’s not indefinite. So it varies around the world but currently in New Zealand, the copyright only lasts for, in the case of a book 50 years, after the year in which the author has died, that might change that might increase in two years, because that’s the case in a lot of other countries. But currently (it lasts) 50 years after the death of the author.
What is the thinking behind that? Is it a case of you made this work so if people are going to make money off it, then it should be you and your relatives, your estate?
For sure, I think artists need to be paid and there’s a lot of time and energy, which is not often very well compensated in the creative world. So it’s there to ensure that those that spend time and energy in creating works get fairly paid for them and can control what happens to them.
As to whether you should watch Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, check out our colleague James Croot’s review of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
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SUPPLIED
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is now available to rent from Neon, YouTube, iTunes and GooglePlay.