Summary:
- The trailer for “Bambi: The Reckoning” is out now.
- This horror film features two characters battling a vengeful, bloodthirsty Bambi after a car accident.
- It’s part of the Twisted Childhood Universe, alongside “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.”
The debut trailer for “Bambi: The Reckoning” has just been released. This new horror film reimagines the classic 1923 novel “Bambi, a Life in the Woods” by Felix Salten, which also inspired Disney’s iconic 1942 animation.
The movie is a continuation of the Twisted Childhood Universe, an interconnected franchise that began with 2023’s “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” and its 2024 sequel.
This universe features horror adaptations of various public domain childhood characters, including Peter Pan and Pinocchio, and will culminate in the forthcoming “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.
The chilling teaser consists of only two scenes. In the first, a hunter inquires, “You ever shot a deer?” before confessing he has just once, hinting that he might be the notorious hunter who killed Bambi’s mother.
The next scene features a vengeful, fully-grown Bambi using his antlers to overturn a car, possibly the one belonging to the hunters.
Can “Bambi: The Reckoning” Achieve Box Office Success?
As the first spinoff in the series, it’s still up in the air whether “Bambi: The Reckoning” will draw in audiences like the earlier movies in the Twisted Childhood Universe, which has had a rocky start.
The original movie was a hit, making $5.2 million from a tiny budget of about $50,000, but the sequel had ten times the budget and only made about a tenth of what the first film did, even though it got much better reviews.
Here’s a quick look at how the two “Winnie-the-Pooh” movies stack up in terms of reviews and box office performance:
The franchise has managed to stay profitable due to its low production costs, which has justified continuing with more sequels and spinoffs, including the upcoming “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3.
However, the performance of “Bambi: The Reckoning” will be crucial for the future of the franchise.
With declining interest in the main Pooh subfranchise, it’s uncertain how a movie about a different childhood character turned into a horror villain will fare.
It looks like “Bambi: The Reckoning” might not perform well at the box office. There’s already a trend where horror movies that turn iconic childhood characters into villains don’t do well financially.
For example, the 2022 Grinch horror movie, “The Mean One,” was released right after the buzz from “Blood and Honey” started. However, it only made $612,260.
If the upcoming movies in the Twisted Childhood Universe don’t do better than that, it’s likely that future movies will have smaller budgets or might even be canceled.
This situation brings up concerns about whether the franchise can keep going in the long run.
While the idea of turning well-loved childhood characters into horror figures initially grabs attention, keeping audiences interested is a bigger challenge.
Therefore, how “Bambi: The Reckoning” does at the box office could be crucial in deciding if the Twisted Childhood Universe will expand further or start to scale back.
