The Hundred Acre Wood is dark and full of terrors in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a new R-rated horror flick that turns Pooh Bear into a serial killer. Debuting in US theaters today, the film follows a college-age Christopher Robin, who returns home to find that his merry pals have gone mad in his absence.

There’s a reason this is Pooh like you’ve never seen him before. Production on the grisly bear movie started last year, when the classic tale left the Disney den and entered the public domain.

This is a big “Oh, bother” moment for Disney

The 1920s was a seminal decade for pop culture, and many of the copyright protections on content introduced then are set to expire 95 years later…or right about now. When these characters enter the public domain, it’s open season to screenwrite their villain era:

• The filmmaker behind Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, also has two other movies planned based on characters that are entering the public domain: Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and (swallow your coffee before reading this next one) Bambi: The Reckoning.
• And next year, the House of Mouse will lose its Mouse, or at least its exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse’s likeness as depicted in his first cartoon, Steamboat Willie.

Warner Bros. better watch out for ambitious auteurs, too: Bugs Bunny, Batman, and Superman will all be up for public grabs within a decade.

However, it’s not open season on all IP

The characters and stories created in the 1920s have evolved from their black-and-white days. Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse is not under the same copyright as King Mickey from Kingdom Hearts. Similarly, since only the copyright on A.A. Milne’s 1926 book, Winnie-the-Pooh, (which Disney acquired in 1961) expired last year, the Pooh horror flick faced restrictions in its depiction of the Poohverse.

• Tigger was off-limits, since he bounced into the lore in 1928.
• Pooh wasn’t allowed to wear a red shirt because he was routinely nude until 1932 (okay, but what if his shirt gets covered in blood?).

Zoom out: There’s apparently an appetite for nightmare-fuel twists on familiar content. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey already earned $1 million in its first market, Mexico, despite being made for less than $100,000. A sequel’s in the works.—JW

Train company CEO tries to lower the temperature in Ohio. Alan Shaw, the head of Norfolk Southern, promised the company would stay in East Palestine, OH, “for as long as it takes” to ensure the safety of residents. Norfolk Southern has faced growing anger over its response to a train derailment earlier this month that spilled toxic chemicals and forced locals to evacuate. Though authorities have said it’s safe to return home, residents have been frustrated by confusing communication over health risks, and Shaw acknowledged there were “still a lot of questions without answers.”

YouTube CEO logs off. Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube for the last nine years, is stepping down. The video site has exploded under her watch, and its $29.2 billion in ad revenue last year accounted for about 10% of Google parent company Alphabet’s total sales. But Wojcicki’s time at the company far predates YouTube—in fact, she was Google’s 16th employee. She was also its first landlord: In 1998, Wojcicki rented out her garage in Menlo Park, CA, to Google’s co-founders for $1,700 a month.

Biden talks UFOs. The president said there was no evidence that the three unidentified flying objects recently taken down by US military jets were Chinese spy balloons. Instead, they were most likely objects sent up by research institutions, private companies, or hobbyists. So, why are we only seeing them now? Biden said the US tightened up its radar after the first appearance of the actual suspected Chinese spy balloon that it also shot down earlier this month. “We don’t have any evidence that there have been a sudden increase in number of objects in the sky,” he said.

Tesla recalled nearly 363,000 vehicles over concerns its “Full Self-Driving” system would not exactly ace a driving test. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that the driver assistance software “may allow the vehicle to act unsafe around intersections,” including by going straight through an intersection while in a turning lane and treating stop signs as stoptional.

The cars affected include certain Model 3, Model X, Model Y, and Model S vehicles produced between 2016 and 2023.

Tesla fought against this recall, with CEO Elon Musk tweeting it was “anachronistic and just flat wrong!” But the company was ultimately pressured into it by the NHTSA. The agency has been investigating Tesla’s automated systems since a fatal crash in 2016, and it’s only ramping up scrutiny.

So, what’s the fix? Tesla said it was going to issue an over-the-air software update for free in the coming weeks.

This wasn’t the only Tesla controversy yesterday

At least 30 Tesla employees at its Buffalo, NY, plant were fired on Wednesday in retaliation for pushing for a union at the factory, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board. The firings came after a group of 25 employees of Tesla’s Autopilot division who worked at the plant sent an email to CEO Elon Musk informing him of their plans to unionize.—NF, MM

In the toy business, there’s Magic: The Gathering…and then there’s everything else.

Hasbro said yesterday that Magic became its first brand to reach $1 billion in annual sales, ahead of its other lines, such as G.I. Joe and Transformers. “I don’t think there is any toy brand that is even half that size,” toy industry analyst Gerrick Johnson told the NYT.

Magic walked so Pokémon could run. The concept of a modern trading card game didn’t really exist until mathematician Richard Garfield invented Magic and released it in 1993. Drawing on Magic’s rabid fandom in its early years, Pokémon released its first trading cards in 1996, and Yu-Gi-Oh! its first set in 1999.

Thirty years and 50+ million players later, it seems Magic hasn’t lost its magic. But Hasbro’s business strategy around the game has come under attack. Last year, Bank of America accused Hasbro of “killing its golden goose” by printing too many cards, which causes them to lose value on the secondary market.

Big picture: Hasbro is going to hype Magic’s milestone all it can, because elsewhere around the company things aren’t looking so great. It lost nearly $130 million during the holiday quarter, and last month announced it was cutting 15% of staff.—NF

Stat: An 1,100-year-old copy of the Hebrew Bible could become the most expensive historical document ever sold. Known as the Codex Sassoon, the 26-pound treasure is going up for auction in May and is expected to fetch between $30 million and $50 million. The book will set the record if it goes for more than $43.2 million, which is what Citadel CEO Ken Griffin famously spent on a copy of the US Constitution in 2021.

Quote: “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry.”

CNN This Morning host Don Lemon received backlash after he discussed GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s age in a conversation about her push for competency tests for politicians over 75. On Twitter, Lemon called his comments “inartful and irrelevant,” and to that walk-back Haley retorted, “Liberals can’t stand the idea of having competency tests for older politicians to make sure they can do the job.”

Read: Unpacking the “junk fee” problem that President Biden mentioned at the State of the Union. (Don’t Worry About the Vase)

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to when ScreenTime tells you you’re 3% lower than last week.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

Architectural wonders: 20 imaginative feats of architecture, art, and design.

Our AI future: Wait until criminals get their “hands” on these.

App improvement ideas: A DoorDash bite request? Zillow neighbor reviews? Nothing’s out of bounds.

Cool map: The buses of New York City.

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Jigsaw: Today’s puzzle is called “Fun at the Puppy Bowl.” Do you need any more reason to solve it? Play here.

Friday puzzle

Here’s a delightful language puzzle from Braingle: The blanks in the following sentences can be filled in with three different homonyms (words that are spelled differently but sound alike) to make coherent sentences. Can you fill in the blanks?

1. The cut on his _____ won’t _____ in time for the race, so _____ have to drop out.

2. The man was so upset about being _____ that he regularly _____ himself up on the bed and _____ his eyes out.

3. I couldn’t _____ any of the _____ in the flower shop, because for some strange reason I had 50 _____ crammed up my nose.

4. A bloodthirsty pirate will wander the _____ and essentially _____ everything he _____.

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Checkerboard sneakers? You know they’re Vans. In this video, the company’s CMO explains how Vans built an iconic brand.