This winter the U.S. copyright system came into the spotlight as Disney’s copyright of Steamboat Willie and other original Mickey Mouse cartoons expired, releasing those animations into the public domain.
Some people have taken advantage of the public domain access to these animations since the copyright expired on January 1, 2024 by posting the full, unedited cartoon on Youtube and claiming they made the animation.
Many other people, however, have taken advantage of the access to these animations by adding something to the cartoon. Videos have popped up all over Youtube of people using parts of Steamboat Willie to express their creativity.
In addition to Youtube videos, artists have utilized their new access to Mickey Mouse to start to make upcoming video games and horror movies. Both a horror game and horror movie have already been teased based on the released cartoon.
This is not the first time we have seen reactions like this. In January of 2022 Disney lost the copyright for Winnie the Pooh and his associated cast of characters. By August 31st, a company called Jagged Edge Productions released a trailer for a horror movie based in the Hundred Acre Woods: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
The movie featured an older version of Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Woods with his significant other. Upon doing so he discovers that his old friends have turned into monsters in his absence. The film then focuses on oddly humanoid versions of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet brutally murdering people. The film’s runtime is one hour and 40 minutes and 15 people die.
The film did not perform well. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey received a 2.9/10 on IMDb, a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 16% on Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes also reports an audience score of 50%.
Jagged Edge Productions is already advertising a sequel to Blood and Honey as well as Bambi and Peter Pan horror movies titled Bambi- The Reckoning and Peter Pan’s Neverland respectively.
Despite negative reactions to the uses of classic media released into the public domain, the U.S. Copyright Office maintains that these kinds of works “further enrich the country’s cultural landscape” by inspiring “new works, adaptations, and derivative works”.
The Copyright Office, therefore, for better or for worse, will continue to have copyrights in the U.S. expire 70 years after the death of the original author. We will see how that will unfold for Mickey Mouse in the coming years, and any other expiring copyrights in the future.
