It is a new year and 2024 has begun. An interesting thing to look forward to is what will happen in terms of digital media this year. It is exciting to see what will come this year. However, one thing that is most certainly coming this year involving a certain popular fictional mouse.
Making his debut in 1928, Mickey Mouse is one of the most popular characters in the history of the world. However, it is his debut that is the important aspect of this story. Most people know that Mickey Mouse’s first cartoon and appearance was in 1928’s “Steamboat Willie”, a cartoon featuring the titular mouse driving a steamboat and making music with a bunch of farm animals and his girlfriend, Minnie. Whilst Mickey goes about his cartoony antics, the bossy Pete the Cat bothers Mickey, kicking him off the captain’s spot and making him peel potatoes. This year in 2024, the cartoon turns ninety-six years old, meaning it is ninety-five concurrently. Because it is so old, the toon has entered something called the “Public Domain” as of the start of this year on January 1st, 2024
What is the public domain? Well, when a piece of media becomes old enough and the creator does not follow legal procedures to extend it, it eventually enters this public domain. The name should give somewhat of a hint of what it means, “Public”. Once a piece of media enters the public domain, it is open to the public for fair use. This means you can use the piece of media for whatever purpose, whatever you want, with no legal consequences or repercussions.
Because of legal procedures not being followed, the original Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie”, is legally fair to use for whatever you would like to use it for! Not only “Steamboat Willie”, but two other Mickey Mouse sound cartoons, “Plane Crazy” and “Gallopin’ Gaucho” are also in the public domain, however for these two you are not allowed to use the audio until 2025, but the footage is fair game. Meaning you have access to all footage, characters, audio (in Steamboat Willie only), backgrounds, ideas, anything from these three toons for whatever you want to.
Since there are no legal problems now, Disney can not do anything about it. This especially bugs them, since they are notorious for being very protective of their IP and characters, since they do not want them to be portrayed in a way they do not see fit. Disney is cracking down, however. They have stated that if they catch anyone using anything from something not from the previously mentioned toons, they will come for you. As an example, you cannot give Mickey Mouse red shorts and yellow boots, or use Minnie Mouse’s modern design (being the pink polka-dot dress and bow, her classic design has her wearing a hat with a flower, a bra and plain dress), or use any characters featured in anything past these three shorts, so this means no Donald, Goofy, Daisy, and Pluto. Although all of this is happening, Disney is still copyrighting people, probably out of spite. They mostly are targeting online creators who are re-uploading the short, even though the creators are legally allowed to.
So, now that you can use Mickey for anything, what has been done? You would probably expect nothing since 2024’s start. However, some things have surfaced. You might expect something cool, perhaps a modern remake of Steamboat Willie? Or a classic Mickey Mouse video game? But no, it is a bad horror movie.
The movie is called “Mickey’s Mouse Trap”. From the trailers, it looks really bad and was most likely made for a quick buck and nothing more. Multiple other public domain characters have fallen for this trap as well. The most recent and notable case would be Winnie the Pooh. He, along with Piglet, went into the public domain roughly around a year ago. One of the first things he was used for was a horror movie called “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey”. Unsurprisingly, it was really bad and was poorly received. Most likely, the filmmakers only do it to get some quick clout and money, and then they call it a day.
Back to Mickey, there is actually another horror movie and even a horror game being worked on, all announced on January 1st, 2024, which is the 1st day Mickey was in the public domain. This is all that has come as of now, but more people will come out and make amazing and more creative things. The year has just started, so who is to say what will come? We will just have to wait to find out what is in store for this iconic cartoon character.
