Last year, Disney celebrated its 100th anniversary, but as the New Year dawned their ownership of the original Mickey Mouse has now come to an end.
Despite the copyright being extended through lobbying Congress twice over the decades, the beloved cartoon character’s first short, 1928’s Steamboat Willie, is finally in the public domain.
The studio has noted that while the black and white original styled Mickey is now out of copyright, later reimaginings of the icon are still theirs.
Now that anyone can create content with the Steamboat Willie incarnation of the character, an independent horror movie has been announced called Mickey’s Mouse Trap.
The low-budget slasher, due for release in March, follows a group of friends trapped inside an amusement arcade after closing, where they are terrorised by a masked killer in a Mickey Mouse costume. But this isn’t the first film of its kind though.
Last year, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain resulting in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.
The horror film follows Pooh and Piglet, now become feral murderers, who terrorise Christopher Robin and his friends when they return to the Hundred Acre Wood years later.
It may have been critically panned, but the $100,000 budget movie made over $5.2 million worldwide and has a sequel and shared universe in development. We wouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself for Mickey’s Mouse Trap later this year.
