It’s Mickey, but not as you’ve ever seen him before.
A trailer for a slasher film, featuring a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse, was released on 1 January, the day that Disney’s copyright on the earliest versions of the cartoon character expired in the US.
“We wanted the polar opposite of what exists,” the movie’s producer said.
A new Mickey-inspired horror game, showing the rodent covered with blood stains, also dropped on the same day.
Steamboat Willie, a 1928 short film featuring early non-speaking versions of Mickey and Minnie, entered the public domain in the US on New Year’s Day.
It means cartoonists, novelists and filmmakers can now rework and use the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
Oh I don’t disagree. I think the standard for most of the 20th century- 19 years with an option to renew for another 19, made a lot more sense. I just don’t praise these companies seeing dollar signs because they can capitalize off of a popular work becoming public domain almost the minute it enters the public domain either.
I agree fundamentally, but I think, especially with AI faking stuff, we need to get back to people just writing things off as shitty ripoffs and ignoring them. Take away the novelty of it and it’ll go away. Disney made this particular bed. Now they gotta lay in it.
I for some reason have enough faith in humanity that once we how dumb this all plays out some realistic rules can be put in place.
I don’t think we are in disagreement here at all. We’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about Disney rightfully getting hurt by this and I’m talking about the people who are going to be using this potentially amazing opportunity in what is likely to be an extremely lazy way like that Winnie the Pooh slasher film.