Mickey Mouse It will go from amusing the youngest viewers to terrifying the older ones. He will do it with a slasher -the narrative genre of vengeful psychopath that chases and kills the protagonists, the same scheme to which they belong Scream o I Know What You Did Last Summer– in which the famous mouse will become the murderer of the passengers of a ship. It is not a crazy idea from The Walt Disney Company to give a twist to his most beloved character, but the consequence of Mickey and his first short film, Willie and the steamboatreleased in 1928, have turned 96 years oldthe maximum age at which works of art enter the public domain in the United States.
The new condition means that the Disney company has lost the copyright on the original work, as well as on the first versions of Mickey and Minnie, who also debuted in the short, and that the characters, therefore, can be used by anyone. artist in new audiovisual or literary works without requesting permission or paying for it. And whoever doesn’t run flies. Director Steven LaMortea filmmaker known for some short films and a zombie film called Bury me twice, has announced with the new year that it has a horror project underway with Mickey as the protagonist and attraction. The script exists although it does not yet have a final title and there are plans to start filming in the spring. LaMorte already did something similar with The Mean Onea horror parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!a book by Dr. Seuss that is in the canon of classic Christmas stories. Now, he assures that his desire is not to ruin the characters or make easy money, but to honor them and expand them with a new approach.
There are more new lives for Mickey. With the new year, news of another project called Mickey’s Mouse Trapdirected by Jamie Bailey, an obscure producer who has apparently turned the Disney mouse into the victim of a horror comedy. In a press release, Bailey stated that His film is shot and he hopes to release it in March. The references are more vague, but Bailey has included the first images of Bad Mickey.
Disney will do what it can to prevent these replicas from reaching the market. The company has been jealously protecting its greatest asset for decades (in 1988 they promoted the so-called Mickey Mouse Protection Law and achieved an extension of their intellectual property) and still retain some rights to the character. In reality, what goes into the public domain is the short film and that first image of Mickey and Minnie, not the later ones. Nor will LaMorte be able to use the character’s official name, which in his film will be called Steamboat Willie.like the title of the 1924 short. “We will continue to protect our rights to modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright and will work to protect against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of our characters.” Disney explained last month.
The move of turning an adorable character into horror, although striking, is by no means original. In addition to the Grinch example, we have the precedent of Winnie the Pooh: Honey and Blood. When the orange bear fell into the public domain, an independent production company made its own slasher directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield and soon caught the attention of the internet. So much so that its premiere planned for streaming jumped to movie theaters in some countries – in Spain it passed through the Sitges Festival and then premiered on the DARK channel – and raised more than five million dollars from a budget of 100,000 .