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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is one of the strangest horror movies coming out this year, taking beloved children’s characters and placing them into a violent thriller. One of the most memorable parts of the movie’s trailer is the creepy theme music. How did horror composer Andrew Scott Bell come up with Blood and Honey’s score?

The public domain allows ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ to use classic characters Winnie the Pooh and Piglet

Blood and Honey came about almost immediately after A.A. Milne’s iconic book characters entered the public domain on January 1, 2022. In May of that year, it was reported that a horror movie based on Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin was in the works by director and producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield. 

According to Variety, filming for Blood and Honey was completed in 10 days. Frake-Waterfield, who wrote and co-produced the film, emphasized that audiences “shouldn’t be expecting this to be a Hollywood-level production.”  

Frake-Waterfield also stressed that the characters from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey are based solely on Milne’s 1926 books and not the Disney movies. The Walt Disney Company still owns the rights to their interpretation of the characters. 

How Andrew Scott Bell used bees to achieve a buzzing violin soundtrack

When the trailer for Blood and Honey hit the internet, many people were intrigued by the chilling theme music that scored the commercial. Bell, an experienced horror composer, used a pretty interesting method to achieve the buzzy tone. 

Bell’s previous credits include horror movies like Lake Forest Road, Psycho Storm Chaser, Give Me An A, and Nite Flirt. However, it wasn’t his experience that got Bell the job, but rather an Instagram DM. The composer told Dread Central he “started seeing some online chatter” about Blood and Honey and was intrigued. 

“I remember looking it up on IMDb and finding the director Rhys Frake-Waterfield on Instagram where his story had a screenshot of a person’s comment saying something to the effect of ‘your movie is ruining our childhoods,’” Bell remembered. “His reaction was, ‘that’s what I’m trying to do, ruin everyone’s childhood.’”

He reached out to Frake-Waterfield and got the job. Bell started brainstorming ideas for the movie’s score and kept coming back to the creations of Tyler Thackray. The experimental luthier makes stringed instruments. 

One of Thackray’s instruments really caught Bell’s eye: a bee-filled violin. The composer reached out over Instagram to ask if he could use it. Thackray said yes. The pair met up to carefully remove the instrument from the beehive where Thackray kept it and figure out how to make it playable. Bell then used the buzzing instrument to create the strange sounds of the Blood and Honey score. 

The success of ‘Blood and Honey’ means more horror movies based on Disney characters are on the way

A screenshot of Pooh and Piglet from the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey trailer
Pooh and Piglet in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey | Rotten Tomatoes Trailers via Youtube
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Blood and Honey was released in Mexico in January of 2023, with an international release date on February 15. The horror movie is already a hit with audiences. A sequel has been greenlit, with a budget “five times bigger” than the first (per Variety). 

Blood and Honey isn’t the only horror movie based on a children’s story that is hitting theaters. Frake-Waterfield and his production company are already hard at work on Bambi: The Reckoning, based on Disney’s Bambi. They also plan to film Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, based on the Peter Pan story. 

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