As the copyright for the early version of Walt Disney’s representative character Mickey Mouse expired, a horror film based on the character was released for the first time.
On the 2nd (local time), IMDB, an American movie data site, released the trailer for the horror film ‘The Mickey Mouse Trap’, which features the Mickey Mouse character as a killer, on the 1st.
The movie is about a friend who prepares a surprise party for the main character, Alex, who works late at night at an amusement park arcade to celebrate her 21st birthday, but then a killer wearing a Mickey Mouse mask appears and plays a game against them.
In the middle of the trailer video, scenes from Walt Disney’s first silent animation, ‘Steamboat Willie’ (1928), were inserted. Also, the original Mickey Mouse face used by the killer appears in a grotesquely distorted shape.
The film crew said, “It’s a ridiculous story about Mickey Mouse from ‘Steamboat Willie’ killing people,” and added, “We wanted to have fun with Mickey Mouse.”
An early Mickey Mouse character whose copyright expired on January 1, 2024. Walt Disney video captureThe reason Mickey Mouse was able to appear as the main character in such a bizarre movie is because Disney’s copyright for ‘Steamboat Willie’ expired on January 1, 2024. With the expiration of the copyright, anyone can freely share, reuse, and adapt this work.
However, foreign media outlets warned that Mickey Mouse characters produced after ‘Steamboat Willie’ are still copyrighted by Disney, so unauthorized use of these characters could result in lawsuits.
This is not the first time that fairy tale or animation characters’ copyrights have expired and they are used in bizarre movies.
In the case of ‘Winnie the Pooh’, which has a cute bear as its motif, the original fairy tale’s copyright expired on January 1, 2022, so anyone can borrow it. Then, a British production company produced a movie called ‘Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey,’ featuring Winnie the Pooh as a killer.
Choi Jae-ho,
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.