The start of 2024 saw a significant turning point in U.S. copyright law as Steamboat Willie– and with it the really first variations of Mickey and Minnie Mouse–gone into public domain for the very first time. Similar to classics before it, in record time individuals required to revealing what is now unavoidable for any brand-new public domain work: what if this timeless work was dark and twisted in fact?
After Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey currently turned A.A. Milne’s kids’s tale into a gory, godawful scary movie, now Jamie Bailey’s Mickey’s Mouse Trap intends to do similar for the 1928 animated brief.
Not on the release scope that Blood and Honey handled to attain last year, Mickey’s Mouse Trap follows a young female called Alex on her 21st Birthday, who discovers herself working a late shift at an amusement game– just to discover it haunted by a masked killer dressed as the Steamboat Willie star. It’s a bit 5 Nights at Freddy’sit’s a bit Saw, it’s quite a bit skirting around what you can in fact make with Steamboat Willie. The film’s name almost dances around what Disney still owns about Mickey as a character in hallmark (i.e., his name), and it’s really informing that Mickey isn’t said when in the trailer– although we do get to see bits of Steamboat Willie playing, naturally.
Unless Disney has anything to state about it, Mickey’s Mouse Trap is anticipated to launch a long time in March, and it’s not the only Steamboat Willie-leveraging work to currently make itself understood. As we kept in mind the other dayNightmare Forge Games’ Infestation 88 is bringing Steamboat Willie to the world of scary video games, and as The Verge notes, individuals are currently utilizing the movie to train A.I. image generators As re-upload the initial brief to Youtube (which Disney itself did 14 years ago. Even a 2nd Steamboat Willie scary film, about Mickey abusing ferrygoers, has actually been revealed to begin recording this Spring.
It’ll take some time to see what individuals truly wish to do– and are pushed to do provided just how much of Mickey Mouse Disney still has legal ownership of beyond that 1928 look– with Steamboat Willie now that it’s in the general public domain. In the meantime, we’re just in the age of mousploitation. It simply occurs to be in the hands of the general public this time, instead of from your house of Mouse itself.
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