The original Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain — and is the villain in a new horror film
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As of New Year's Day, Disney’s iconic character Steamboat Willie has been made available for creatives to use now that the original mouse’s copyright has ended. After 95 years, the cartoon that originally introduced Mickey and Minnie Mouse is now in the public domain.
“Disney has fought to keep its copyright of the famous cartoon character as long as possible, lobbying the U.S. government to extend copyright protection before it was originally set to expire in 1984,” according to Time.
Coined the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, “In 1976 the law was changed to allow owners to retain copyright protections for the duration of the life of the author plus an additional 50 years. In 1998, Disney once again successfully lobbied along with other entertainment companies to extend copyright protections to life of the author plus 70 years,” Time added.
Mickey goes horror
Now that Steamboat Willie is available for creators, a horror movie has already been announced that depicts a killer in a distorted Mickey Mouse mask terrorizing teens at an arcade.
“A place for fun, a place for friends, a place for hunting. The mouse is out,” the trailer reads for the slasher film titled “Mickey’s Mouse Trap.”
Mickey Mouse isn’t the only family-friendly character to be twisted into a killer. Once the copyrights ended for Winnie-the-Pooh, the simple bear was given a new role as a killer in the movie “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” which was released in 2022.
Although not in the public domain, the Grinch was also twisted into a killer in 2022 in a movie by director Steven LaMorte titled “The Mean One,” who said he was able to get past copyright laws “on the grounds of parody,” per Vanity Fair.
Simon Phillips, the writer and producer for the upcoming Mickey Mouse slasher film, told BBC, “People need to not take it too seriously, we made a ridiculously fun movie.”
“If you put Mickey into a family movie, you don’t cover new ground,” Phillips added. “In order to flip the coin, you have to come up with something that’s the polar opposite of what already exists.”
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What does this mean for Disney’s Mickey?
The fun-loving Mickey that most generations have grown up with is not turning into a killer anytime soon. So much has changed in Mickey’s character since Steamboat Willie.
“Disney has a lot of things to worry about right now, and the expiration of Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse probably shouldn’t be on the top of their list. The original Mickey isn’t the one we all think of and have on our T-shirts or pillowcases up in the attic someplace,” Robert Thompson, a trustee professor of television, radio and film at Syracuse University, told The Guardian.
However, Disney is not a company to take copyright laws lightly. “We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright,” the Walt Disney Co. said in a statement, per The Associated Press, emphasizing that it “will work to safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters.”
