Director of new Boonie Bears movie denies Briar's death

The new Boonie Bears (熊出没) movie has sparked a flood of speculation in China after an early screening of its trailer. Several attendees interpreted that Briar, the older bear, had died ten years earlier and that his brother Bramble imagined him as a hallucination. The director and franchise executives have come out to deny it: there is no death, just a temporary disappearance.

The uproar came from a specific scene in the trailer. In it, Logger Vick claims that Briar has been dead for a decade and that Bramble made him up. The sequence, with Bramble turning around in the middle of a snowstorm and finding emptiness behind him, was enough for the topic "Briar has been eliminated" to climb Weibo's trending list.

The hashtag quickly filled with reactions from fans of the bear. One attendee at the event summed up the confusion: "For Briar fans, having such a beloved character suddenly die is something that surprises and saddens."

The director speaks of a "temporary absence"

The director has tried to calm things down without revealing the plot. According to Chinese press reports, he said the trailer "looks like one thing, but it is without a doubt a warm-toned story." Regarding the alleged death, he only mentioned a "temporary absence."

The official synopsis filed with China's National Film Administration also does not support the death theory. The movie, titled Boonie Bears: We and scheduled for February 6, 2027, begins with an argument between the two brothers. Bramble leaves home angry and, when he wakes up, cannot find Briar anywhere. Desperate, he runs into a mysterious young woman from the Heyao tribe named Gila, who guides him on a journey to get his brother back. What Bramble does not know is that he is heading toward a major conspiracy.

The filing mentions the disappearance, never death. "Missing does not mean dead," insists the official "Bramble Animation" account, which attributes the rumor to the subjective interpretation of a viewer during a fan meetup. According to that version, some digital media took the idea of the disappearance and rewrote it as death to get clicks.

A franchise that cannot afford that twist

The team points out that Briar is one of the central protagonists of the intellectual property. The series has maintained a family-friendly and optimistic tone since its premiere, and such a drastic twist would clash with that line.

The controversy has also served to correct another minor hoax: the supposed official English name of the bear, "xiongbig." The team clarifies that the real name is Briar.

The movie will open in Chinese theaters on February 6, 2027. Until then, the trailer will keep fueling theories, but the official version is clear: Briar has not died.