The Twisted Childhood Universe is a British Slasher-Horror movie franchise by the independent Jagged Edge Productions. It consists of adaptations of public domain children's media characters where the characters themselves are the killers.
The series began in 2023 with the release of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which was announced very shortly after the original book by A.A. Milne entered the Public Domain. Despite being critically maligned, the film's near nonexistent budget and widespread online publicity by people who couldn't believe someone would make it resulted in it being a financial success, inspiring creator/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and his associates to plan several more movies set in the same Shared Universe (with the ironic exclusion of their first movie) based on other public domain children's works like Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and etc.
The released and planned future films include:
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) note
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (2024)
- Bambi: The Reckoning (2024)
- Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare (2024)
- Pinocchio: Unstrung (2024)
- Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble (2025)
- Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 (TBA)
- Awakening Sleeping Beauty (TBA)
Tropes shared across the films:
- Adaptational Badass: The films take characters who were noncombatants in their source material and twist them into killing machines. These include Pooh and company, plus Bambi.
- Adaptational Villainy: The Twisted Childhood Universe takes public domain children's media protagonists and transforms them into serial killers. Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Owl have undergone this trope in the Blood and Honey films, and Bambi, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio are set to follow suit.
- Bloodier and Gorier: There wasn't that much violence in the source material, whereas these films, being horror films first and foremost, crank up the gore to the next level.
- Darker and Edgier: Than their source materials (even the ones that deals with darker themes and subject matter) with these movies being full on horror films with the protagonists being turned into villainous killers.
- Expy: Several of the characters introduced so far appear to take inspiration from other horror franchise villains.
- Winnie-the-Pooh is similar to Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise, due to his mainly silent nature, durability, committing mass murder and being related to the main protagonist.
- Piglet is similar to Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, acting as the heavy to a group of mainiacs.
- Tigger's personality and behaviour is similar to Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
- Owl has a similar appearance to the Creeper from the Jeepers Creepers film franchise, as well as sharing the ability to fly like that villain.
