Fans Celebrate as ‘Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble’ Brings a Bold Public Domain Horror Crossover This Summer

It’s finally on its way, folks. Four movies and many more withering reviews later, The Twisted Childhood Universe (a.k.a Poohniverse) is getting ready to ruin your childhood on a greater scale than ever before. Having introduced themselves one at a time in the previous installments, this franchise’s murderous perversions of the characters we’ve known and loved since time immemorial (which is to say, just long enough for public domain to come into play) are ganging up for a “Monsters Assemble” flick – and they’ll have a few more friends to boot.

Filming Begins in Under Three Months

We’ve known about this epic team-up for close to two years now. The Poohniverse’s first installment, 2023’s “Winnie-the-Pooh: Bloody and Honey,” grossed nearly $8 million on a budget of $50,000, indicating to everyone involved that the franchise had found its audience. In March of 2024, shortly before the release of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2,” Jagged Edge Productions announced (per Bloody Disgusting) that all their forthcoming standalone childhood-icon-turned-monster movies would eventually culminate in an Avengers-style union of these nightmarish characters.

This past Jan. 11, Jagged Edge Productions confirmed via X that production on “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble” would commence soon: that they would be “filming [it] this summer.” Most, if not all, of the franchise’s previous installments have been filmed within a month, so it’s safe to predict with confidence that production will wrap well before autumn.

What Do We Know About It?

In the 2024 article, Poohniverse producer and creator Rhys Frake-Waterfield (who directed both “Bloody and Honey” films) described the planned movie as “complete carnage,” that would be “heavily influenced by Freddy vs. Jason and The Avengers,” and that he had “some incredible set pieces in mind and some sequences I think will truly shock people.”

Fellow producer/creator Scott Chambers listed Bambi, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and, of course, the human-animal monsters of “Winnie-the-Pooh” among the characters who will appear in “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.” All of these characters, except Pinocchio, have already appeared in this franchise, and Pinocchio’s own film is also on its way. Intriguingly, he also name-dropped Sleeping Beauty and the Mad Hatter as “Monsters Assemble” villains; standalone installments for these characters are still in the early stages, but in the meantime, there’s no reason why the TCU’s answer to the Avengers shouldn’t have as expansive a cast as possible.

While Frake-Waterfield explained that these monstrous villains will “group together and are going after their survivors,” Chambers added that there’ll also be some internecine bloodshed to spice things up: “Some of the villains also will not see eye to eye which will allow for some carnage within the group in some epic sequence of monster vs monster.”

Frake-Waterfield will return as the director of “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble,” while Chambers will reprise his role as Christopher Robin from “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.” (Nikolai Leon was the first to play this character in the original “Blood and Honey”). Other returning cast members include Megan Placito as Wendy Darling, Roxanne McKee (“Game of Thrones,” “Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines”) as a character named Xana from “Bambi: The Reckoning,” and Lewis Santer as Tigger.

“Monsters Assemble” And More

Moreover, while all Poohniverse aficionados wait as patiently as they can manage for the day that “Monsters Assemble” is released (there’s no announced release date yet), they’ll get at least one other installment to tide them over. The aforementioned “Pinocchio: Unstrung,” featuring the talents of such horror legends as Richard Brake and Robert Englund, will be released later on this year, while “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3” (directed by Chambers in this case) will begin filming.

Hang in there, fans: while we cannot yet say how long you’ll have to wait for “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble,” the TCU’s most epic entry yet is something worth spending a lot of time on.