The box office success of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey poses the question of which other public domain tales are best suited for the horror genre…

A good story remains paramount to a successful horror movie, but the heightened genre has also found considerable success through chilling adaptations. A major hurdle in any adaptation of an existing work is securing the copyright or license to legally be allowed to reinterpret this source material. Plenty of horror movie pipe dreams couldn’t come to fruition precisely because the rights for certain properties couldn’t be acquired. But an interesting wrinkle when it comes to the acquisition of rights is stories that have entered the public domain.

Written works typically enter the public domain seventy years after the death of their latest living author. It’s a situation that means that certain texts, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are free to be tackled by anyone who has a creative take. 

There are also unique storytellers, like Scott Jeffrey and Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who have found ways to almost weaponize public domain stories to create a built-in audience for their low-budget slasher films. Producer Scott Jeffrey has seen some of the biggest success of his career after the release of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey–a movie that gives A.A. Milne’s original story a horror makeover–with Bambi: The Reckoning already on tap. Additionally, Blood and Honey director Rhys Frake-Waterfield has Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, as well as a Winnie-the-Pooh sequel on his docket. Focusing on public domain stories that have a Disney connection and broader mainstream recognition is a strategy that’s worked well for these two directors. ‘

There’s nothing wrong with tackling other public domain properties that audiences associate with Disney, but it raises the question of which other public domain novels would make for the most effective horror films.

Beauty And The Beast By Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot De Villeneuve

Beauty and the Beast is one of the biggest Disney movies of all-time and it helped solidify the company’s current strategy to deliver live-action versions of their most popular animated films. The original Beauty and the Beast is a French fairytale that charts back to the 1700s and drew inspiration from the real-life bittersweet story of Petrus Gonsalvus and his beautiful prospective bride, Catherine. Beauty and the Beast has been adapted into an oddly satisfying Ron Perlman TV series as well as a perplexing Vanessa Hudgens rom-com, but the very nature of its premise is the perfect fit for horror. 

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s original story doesn’t feature sassy talking furniture and harmonized musical numbers. What remains is a tale of physical deformity that can only be broken through the promise of true love. Beauty and the Beast is perfect territory for any budding body horror savant or an old genre master like Brian Yuzna. Under the Skin’s Jonathan Glazer would also feel completely in line with a Beauty and the Beast horror movie. This horror adaptation could focus exclusively on the prince’s increased deterioration, but it could just as easily incorporate an element where the “Beast” can regain some of his beauty through the killing of others; or perhaps it’s how he insists that his imprisoned “Beauty” proves her love to him.

Around The World In 80 Days By Jules Verne

Jules Verne is a truly prolific author, and many of his works of fiction have been adapted in film and television – although rarely through the context of heightened horror. Around the World in 80 Days is a particularly compelling public domain story to turn into horror since it mostly operates as a fun and frolicking adventure. Phileas Fogg and his valet boldly take on an extravagant wager that will reward them with immense riches if they can circumnavigate the Earth in a span of 80 days. This exciting starting point is the product of hubris and greed, but it could be fascinating to recontextualize this wager through the twisted mind of a serial killer.

Perhaps this time around, a detective has to span the planet in 80 days to catch an over the top serial killer and foil his grand plans. At the same time, this could be a story where the Phileas Fogg character must eradicate monsters from across the globe in the span of 80 days. An even more ridiculous angle where a killer wants to travel the globe and take lives in every country that he visits would also work. This would all be such an absurd twist to Verne’s original story, but it’s no more outlandish than the plot of Blood and Honey.

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland By Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is another public domain story that’s largely become appropriated by Disney, but it’s received multiple adaptations, several of which stick closer to Carroll’s source material instead of the exaggerated elements that Disney has doubled down on. Some may consider Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass to feel like horror films on some level, but they’re still family-friendly affairs that feel indebted to Disney iconography. 

A satisfying horror version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has yet to happen and the closest thing is the survival horror game, American McGee’s Alice. That being said, this public domain property feels tailor-made for horror. A drugged, delusional experience where the protagonist feels consistently overwhelmed in completely fantastical ways could be nightmarish if done right. A homicidal Alice who’s a menace to Wonderland and is willing to kill whoever gets in her path until she gets back is an easy framework to build upon. Wonderland is such a rich world to transform into a horrific wasteland that could go in so many different directions. A horror director with a flair for vibrant set design would work, but Wonderland could also work as a dreary trap-filled dungeon that’s the work of someone like Jigsaw. Someone like Rob Zombie or Karyn Kusama could really thrive in this environment. 

Gulliver’s Travels By Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift’s initial aim with his dry satire, Gulliver’s Travels, was “to vex the world rather than divert it.” There are so many horror filmmakers that seem to pride themselves upon a similar ethos. One wonders what Ari Aster, Luca Guadagnino, or Julia Ducournau with their own take on Swift’s iconic story of exploration and self-discovery.

There are certain broader elements from Gulliver’s Travels, such as the tiny Lilliputians and the giants of Brobdingnag, which are easy to play for laughs. That being said, they’re concepts that could truly be mined for their existential terror. These jarring extremes are enough to fuel a diverse and visually compelling horror movie, but the third section of Gulliver’s Travels features pirates and flying island utopias that could really be depicted in horrifying lights through directors like David Lowery or even Edgar Wright.

It’s the constant surprises and inherent social commentary within Gulliver’s Travels that make it such an appealing text to adapt.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea By Jules Verne

Jules Verne loves to tell limitless stories that stoke the audience’s imagination and take them to unprecedented places. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea digs into the unknown nature of what dwells deep in the ocean. Sea monsters are popular territory for horror, albeit material that’s difficult to do justice. A more horror-centric take on this property could fully embrace these hypothetical aquatic creatures and terrors of the deep (like in Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, for instance) or instead deliver more of a psychological horror movie where paranoia and fear cause the submarine’s crew to turn on one another. It may be too close to what the director accomplished in The Lighthouse, but Robert Eggers would really kill an adaptation of this with Willem Dafoe as the eternally haunted Captain Nemo.

The power of something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is that it can operate as a huge special effects spectacle that showcases underwater exploration in all of its glory, but it just as easily can be explored in a claustrophobic sense that’s mostly set aboard the submarine.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is now playing in select theaters.