We could be in the early stages of a troublesome cinematic trend capable of ruining the childhoods of multiple generations, with public domain properties everyone knows and loves being reinvented as brutal R-rated horror movies. In a turn of events that we most definitely didn’t see coming, Bambi could be next in line to swap wholesome family entertainment for buckets of blood.
A recent report picked up on by TheDisInsider notes that ITN Studios and Jagged Edge Productions are poised to team up for Bambi: The Reckoning, which obviously hails from one of the deranged minds behind the attention-grabbing Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
Taking the adorable deer and transforming them into “a vicious killing machine that lurks in the wilderness,” The Reckoning will be directed by Scott Jeffrey and seek to carve up a slice of the pie that’s seen the aforementioned Blood and Honey and Grinch-inspired The Mean One capture the imaginations of gorehounds everywhere.
Even more incredulously, director Jeffrey name-dropped Netflix’s cult favorite The Ritual as an inspiration on the new and certainly not improved design of the titular fawn, which conjures up all sorts of nightmarish images of a doe-eyed deer possessing many extra limbs as it emerges from the undergrowth to devour its prey whole.
Obviously taking its cues from the original 1923 story Bambi, a Life in the Woods as opposed to the 1942 all-time great hailing from the Mouse House, we have to wonder what the Disney top brass has to say about so many characters the company embedded into the public consciousness becoming the stars of gnarly slashers.