The Twisted Childhood Universe debuted in 2023 with the release of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. The film, written and directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, was a surprise commercial success, grossing $7.7 million worldwide, and has a 2024 sequel. Scott Chambers, the star and producer of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, directs the third installment in this universe, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.
The film follows Wendy Darling (Megan Placito) as she attempts to rescue her brother Michael (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) from the clutches of the evil Peter Pan (Martin Portlock), who intends to send him to Neverland. Along the way, she meets a twisted Tinker Bell (Kit Green) hooked on what she thinks is fairy dust.
Ahead of the film’s three-day theatrical run from January 13th to January 15th, we spoke with filmmakers Scott Chambers and Rhys Frake-Waterfield about the the film and what’s to come.
Check out our interview with Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare stars Martin Portlock and Kit Green here.
HGL: Rhys, I’ve seen people respond to your films by saying, “You’re ruining my childhood!” I don’t agree with this sentiment, and I have to ask: How do you respond when confronted with it?
Rhys Frake-Waterfield: Some people absolutely love them because it’s just different from the norm. But then we get that group of people who come at us for that as well. Normally, our standard response to those people is that you don’t have to watch the film. If you don’t watch it, it doesn’t ruin your childhood, but there’s an audience that loves this.
We’re really trying to cater these films to the horror audience. We’re massive horror fans. We’re trying to use practical effects as much as possible in these. And we’re trying to subvert it and just take them in a completely different direction to what you’ve previously seen.
HGL: And you did just that. I expected something silly, only to get a seriously brutal film. What made you go in that direction versus a fairy tale slasher?
Rhys Frake-Waterfield: We want to take all of these films seriously. We don’t want them to come across like they’re just a cash grab. Full disclosure with Winnie 1: we never knew how big that was going to go. We made it on literally nothing. It was like $20,000, and it blew up. There wasn’t time to make adjustments and make the film we would have wanted to. But since then, that’s propelled us into a new budget range with these films. Winnie 2, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio have gone up even higher in budget relative to them. And with that sort of money, both myself and Scott just want to make the best film possible.
So we’re taking it very seriously, and we’re trying to come up with stuff that is different. It’s compelling. It’s got practical effects as much as possible. And the villains are different and interesting. But the reason this one went really much more serious than Pooh 2, I’d say, is Scott.
Scott Chambers: Yeah. I talk a lot when people ask about this about the Conjuring Universe, for example. When you go into that, The Nun, Annabelle, all those films, I feel like you always get the same tone and you know what you’re getting yourself into, which is great. But for this, I didn’t want it to be that closed off. I wanted it to be accessible to all the horror audiences. If you didn’t like Pooh, you might like this one. If this one’s too dark for you, then maybe Pinocchio won’t be because that’s a bit in the middle. Ultimately, the director has to be passionate because these are so hard to make. Even though we’re on more money, this was still really, really difficult. It was really low budget. And I had to fight for this film no matter what, you know what I mean? There were some challenges and some hard days, and I knew I had to go into this incredibly invested in it. And that’s the same with all of them.
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Myself and Rhys are very different directors. What excites me is different to him. But that’s great because, in this universe, one project will fit me more than it does him. And then we’ve got this other director, Dan Allen, who did Bambi, and he’s different as well. So you’ll get different tones and tastes from these.
But I just felt like with Peter Pan, the crux of the original story was already creepy. This man essentially climbs into the bedroom, lays a child out, and they go to Neverland. So I was like, this is instantly easy for me to make it horror.
Rhys Frake-Waterfield: It very much depends on what the concept is as well. It’s like certain concepts in this universe can lend themselves to different kinds of tones. So like Scott was saying, like Peter Pan, because he’s going in taking children, wanting to take him to Neverland, that can go in a much more creepy, serious route. Whereas if I tried to go that extreme with Winnie the Pooh, I don’t think it would have worked, because it’s just a yellow bear with those little silly ears. You have to lean into the fun comedy side of that a bit. And Poohniverse [Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble] is going to be the most fun of them.
HGL: I can’t wait to see what that one brings. Scott, you both just talked about being massive horror fans. When I spoke to Martin and Kit this morning, they said they’re not horror fans and credited your “strong ideas.” Can you talk about their casting? Because they felt natural in their roles.
Scott Chambers: Well, auditioning is key from the get-go. Knowing that you’ve got people where their instincts are right. Because I come from an acting background, I’m very, very, very focused on the eyes. I want to see the actor being in the moment, feeling it. I don’t want to see big movements. I don’t like any of that. I like close-ups. I like seeing it all in the eyes and those layers.
When I was writing the script, again, coming from a performing background, I try and create characters that I would want to play. So with Wendy and Tinker Bell and Peter Pan and Hook, these are all characters that I would dream of playing. I try and create roles that would excite another performer so that they will be invested in it just like I probably would. I also don’t get attracted to characters that are the bitch, the jock. I don’t have time to explore those characters. I didn’t want that for this. I didn’t want Wendy to be a cookie-cutter. I wanted her to have jagged edges and have things wrong and all that stuff. Not be the perfect girl. Just like no one is.
But with Martin and Kit, I’d auditioned a lot of actors. I instantly loved them. The next thing was about that phone call and making sure that they would trust me because I know, as an actor, I’m going to ask them to do some really over-the-top stuff at points. And I’m going to need that range. I’m not going to get many takes and I need them to just give me it. I mean, go to 100. Now, give me 50. Now give me 20 percent. Give me these different things for the edit. I believed on these phone calls that I had people that would be true collaborators and would trust me.
This is a very character-driven story over, maybe, Winnie the Pooh, where there was lots of, you know, murder and all that kind of stuff. Whereas this, if those performances aren’t good, my film probably will fall apart. And I was very aware of that. I was just lucky that they trusted me, really.
With the horror, I did say to them, you’re going to be covered in blood, and you need to not moan because it’s going to be so difficult. I understand it totally. But being covered in blood, covered in prosthetics, it’s all fun and games for an hour. Twelve hours later, you feel gross, you’re sticky. I was like, I get it. Just communicate with me when you’re not happy. Just communicate, and we’ll get there. We’ve got to be all on the same page. And I got that out of them. I was very lucky.
HGL: I think it’s safe to say they feel the same way working with you. Lastly, Rhys, are you surprised by the success that you have found with this universe? And, Scott, the ending leaves it open for a sequel. Is that something we might see?
Rhys Frake-Waterfield: So yeah, in terms of the success of the franchise and stuff, like with Winnie 1, we thought there was going to be a bit of like interest with it initially. It would be seen to a certain degree online. But obviously, it was like lightning in a bottle; it just blew up and went worldwide. And we were making that on a very constrained budget. But then that success of that first film has now lent us to go into a higher budget range. And then this is where we’re really able to flex what we can do as filmmakers. We’re really trying to take this as seriously as possible and make the best films we possibly can. The hope is from these films—Winnie 2, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio—that people will see the progression and they’ll see that the films are getting better and better and better and that they’ll get invested in it.
For me, that was one of the big things I pushed with our distributors and our American partners. They wanted to keep the budgets quite low. And it was like, do the same again. Make it on basically the same money as you made Winnie 1 on. And then we’ll make a lot of money from it. But me and Scott don’t want to do that. We think the only way you have longevity with this and build a solid product, which is good for the fans and good for us as filmmakers, is to really focus on quality.
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There’s been a lot of these coming out in the market. These public domain horrors people are running to do. I’ve seen Rapunzel, Snow White, Popeye; they’re just doing anything as quickly as possible. But we’ve really tried to take the time with these, and hopefully make something which people are really interested in. And they can see this progression and then they buy into it. By doing that, it will push this into an even bigger budget range for us, which is what’s been happening.
But with Pinocchio, that’s gone up in budget relative to these two films as well. And then Pooniverse is going to go up in budget relative to Pinocchio. With every step up, the films are going to get massively better. And we want to do the same thing over and over. We want to keep reinvesting it into the film and make it the best for the fans because we’re massive Peter Pan fans.
Scott Chambers: And then with the sequel, funny enough, I actually had an entirely different script for Peter Pan. So, I have it literally on my desktop now. I really love that script. But it was, scope-wise, too big for the budget I had. So I got cold feet. That’s why I went back to the drawing board and started again. But I have that I’d love to make it as a sequel.
Again, it’s so important that people go out and support this film because that’s how we’ll get that budget to make the sequels to reinvest in all that kind of stuff. We’ll just have to see how this one goes. But you’ll definitely see Peter Pan in Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. And yeah, he’s gonna be nasty.
Rhys Frake-Waterfield: They’re all connecting towards that film. So yeah, you’ll definitely see these characters reappear.
