Mickey Mouse is teased as a ruthless murderer just one day after entering the public domain

Walt Disney's most profitable rodent has scurried out of the company's total control and into bloody new arenas.

Despite the corporate giant's desperate lobbying efforts to once again alter American copyright law to suit its purposes, Disney's Mickey Mouse entered into the public domain Monday along with various other notable characters and creative works, including "Mack the Knife," Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus," Buster Keaton' "The Cameraman," Agatha Christie's "The Mystery of the Blue Train," and Peter Pan.

The ratty-looking versions of the mouse seen in the 1928 animated short films "Steamboat Willie," "Plane Crazy," and "Gallopin' Gaucho" appear to be getting a similar treatment to that recently received by Winnie the Pooh — another beloved animated character re-imagined as a savage killer following his entry into the public domain in 2022.

Killer mouse

Video game developer Nightmare Forge Games released a trailer Monday for its upcoming survival horror title Infestation 88, featuring a sickly-looking Mickey who hunts down player-controlled exterminators in a dark warehouse.

"In the year 1988, what was thought be an outbreak of vermin morphed into something far more sinister," reads the description of the game on Steam. "Prepare to face and eliminate a horrific entity, with each episode containing a distinct classic character or urban legend responsible for the infestation."

Infestation 88 - Official Reveal Traileryoutu.be

A trailer also dropped Monday for a live-action slasher film entitled "Mickey's Mouse Trap," featuring a menace wearing a Mickey mask stalking prospective victims and attacking an individual.

"A place for fun, a place for friends, a place for hunting. The mouse is out," the trailer telegraphs.

The plot of the film, directed by Jamie Bailey, is described thusly on IMDB: "It's Alex's 21st Birthday, but she's stuck at the amusement arcade on a late shift so her friends decide to surprise her, but a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse decides to play a game of his own with them which she must survive."

MICKEY'S MOUSE TRAP FILM TEASER TRAILER (2024) - FIRST EVER MICKEY MOUSE HORROR FILM!!!!youtu.be

The Hollywood Reporter indicated the film does not have a release date and that it's unclear if its producers have a distributor on board.

"We just wanted to have fun with it all. I mean it’s Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse murdering people," Bailey said in a statement. "It's ridiculous. We ran with it and had fun doing it and I think it shows."

Copies and rights

Both horror adaptations specifically feature the likeness of the mouse debuted in the late 1920s since all more recent versions remain the strict intellectual property of Disney, including the sorcerer's apprentice seen in the 1940 film "Fantasia" as well as the rodent featured in dozens of animated films throughout the 1930s.

Kembrew McLeod, an intellectual property scholar at the University of Iowa, stressed to NPR that "[w]hat is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film."

"Ever since Mickey Mouse's first appearance in the 1928 short film Steamboat Willie, people have associated the character with Disney's stories, experiences, and authentic products," a Disney spokesman told the Associated Press over the weekend. "That will not change when the copyright in the Steamboat Willie film expires."

Whereas copyrights can lapse, "trademark law has no end," Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji told NPR.

While the "Steamboat Willie" mouse can be shared, copied, and repurposed, Disney's trademark on Mickey Mouse apparently precludes people from using the character in such a way that misleads consumers into thinking the work has the blessing of the House of Mouse.

Okediji warned that trademark law could be used to "effectively extend the life of a copyrighted work."

In the case of Mickey, Disney might intervene if adaptations could be argued to infringe on or dilute the corresponding trademark on account of how the mouse is used.

Daniel Mayeda from the UCLA School of Law similarly warned that adaptations could prove dicey, telling the Guardian in 2022, "You can use the Mickey Mouse character as it was originally created to create your own Mickey Mouse stories or stories with this character. But if you do so in a way that people will think of Disney – which is kind of likely because they have been investing in this character for so long – then in theory, Disney could say you violated my copyright."

Disney indicated in a statement that extra to protecting "[its] rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright," it would "safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters."

Harvard Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet suggested in October that "people should be free to use the materials despite the existence of trademark rights, because trademark law shouldn't be able to stop you from doing what copyright law allows you to do and is set up to allow you to do. It's no accident that things go into the public domain."

However, Tushnet added that the "contours of that are as yet unclear, precisely because Congress lengthened the copyright term, and so we didn't get this problem until recently."

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