Amph Mickey Mouse now in public domain - 2 horror stories already in production

Mickey Mouse now in public domain - 2 horror stories already in production

https://www.wpri.com/entertainment-news/first-pooh-now-mickey-in-public-domain-early-mickey-mouse-version-will-star-in-horror-movies/

 

This is so painfully stupid. Is the only thing we're going to do with the public domain make stupid horror stories for shock value? What if Peter Pan was a murderer? What if Winnie the Pooh was a murderer? What if Mickey Mouse was a murderer? These people should stop watching torture porn and get a new idea.

 

Screamboat Willie was right there

 

I'm not even sure that they needed to wait for Steamboat Willie to be public domain to make this. Aside from the title and the Mickey mask its a generic slasher movie.

 

An unsettlingly hyper realistic cgi rat named Michael has aspersions for showbiz but can’t cut it. So he changes his name to Mickey and murders rising star Oswald the lucky rabbit. “Mickey” starts wearing Oswalds skin as a suit and eventually makes it big performing physical comedy, meanwhile detectives investigating his sudden rise to stardom begin approaching his dark secret. They wind up conveniently and brutally murdered one by one by a giant rat that is never officially identified.

It’s a better pitch than whatever they are doing.

 

That's....not exactly a high bar to clear.

 

That's not public domain Peter Pan, that's just regular Peter Pan:
"The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two. "

 

Yeah and when’s the last time a low-budget indie slasher film with an original character got a bunch of free advertising from clickbait farms? These people aren’t stupid, unlike the algorithms churning out these articles.

 

I’m sure there will be other uses soon, these are just the first.

 

The original Screamboat Willie horror movie is Sleepaway Camp

 

FTFY.

I’m amazed the knock-off factories that were churning out, like, public domain Thor movies in the MCU heydays never hit upon this formula for exploiting garbage websites.

Edit: Sorry I’m just really cranky about this today, apparently.

 

I liked how the very poorly made (but entertainingly poorly made) Princess of Mars came out to ride the coattails not of John Carter (which came out a couple years later) but of Avatar.

 

Not even they thought John Carter was worth gambling on.

 

Peter Pan IS an Eldritch Horror, though. Like in the source material

 

And his accomplice, Manson Mouse.

 

Yep. A mobile killing base, with easy corpses disposal.

 

Due to an oddity in law, going back to a treaty signed in 1892, Steamboat Willie is actually still protected by copyright in Germany untl the end of 2041.

Copyright in Germany would normally follow the rules of the nation a work originated from, but in this particular case, the treaty from 1892 declares that US citizens have to be treated on the same level as German citizens on this matter. And since copyrights in Germany last until 70 years after the death of the creator, the copyright will still apply until 2041.

 

I still don't really get how this stuff works.
Surely Disney owns any character that was created by the studio. If the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey pre-dates the founding of the studio, why didn't Walt just sign over the character to his company in perpetuity?
Can someone not just buy rights permanently?

 

this news has led this tune to be rent free in my head.

 

Actually, Disney the studio/company is 100 years old this year, being founded in 1923 and 5 years before Steamboat Willie was released.

 

No, you can not buy rights permanently. As the law currently stands everything will enter the public domain at one point or another.

 

Even something that is owned in perpetuity like the rights to Peter Pan?
Or 20th Century Fox's distribution rights to Star Wars (which is said to be one of the reasons Disney bought the studio in the first place)?

 

Peter Pan is a special exemption only in the UK. Despite the stage play entering the public domain in the US this year, the novel has been in the public domain in the US for some time - in most countries, all works eventually revert to the public domain, and this is even true for most works in the UK.

Star Wars, like any film, will enter the public domain in various countries at the time those countries’ copyrights for films expire (often 50 years or longer after initial release). At that time distribution rights will cease to be relevant aside from weird technicalities related to trademarks* in those countries.



*Trademarks are not copyrights and it gets strange, fast, particularly since in some countries they can be renewed indefinitely if used continuously. For example, as of Monday Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse is trademarked, but not copyrighted, in the US, so while you can slap him on a t-shirt, if you sell that t-shirt Disney might be able to sue you because they can argue that your product is “misrepresenting itself” as being affiliated with Disney (not the proper terminology) unless it “clearly isn’t,” whatever that means. This is possibly the other, subtler reason horror movies are becoming a memetic go-to as Disney stuff goes public - no court of law is going to be convinced that “Mickey Mouse as slasher villain” is a product that could be misconstrued as a Disney work.

 

Sci-fi fans are going to be very happy when stuff becomes public domain & all their fan films become totally legitimate.


I always thought copyright only expired a certain number of years after the creator dies?
Otherwise how can you lose ownership of something you made unless you willingly give it up to someone else?

How do big companies like the comics industry protect their IP if anyone ends up being able to use Batman without giving them royalties?

 

They can’t, and at a certain point, nor should they. Copyright is there is to enable creative industries to exist within a capitalist economy (i.e. making them property) but there’s no inherent value in something being held indefinitely, especially when the original creator is dead and the rights holder is just some corporation. They have had ample opportunity to make money from the creation, and then it passes to collective ownership. The law around intellectual property is a concept to enable commerce, it’s not some inherent virtue.

I wouldn’t say that it makes it ‘legitimate’ so much as it just means that profit can be made from them. They are no more or less legitimate as they are at the moment. It’s also a legal minefield to start just making new content around a newly public domain property - everything that was created since the initial creation only slowly moves into the public domain. To use Star Wars as an example, you could make a sequel to ANH, but you would have to be very careful to not include anything else that was created in TESB, until that falls into the public domain, etc, etc. There’s also the issues around trademarks law.