On 1 January, some classic characters will lose their copyrights in the US. One of these characters is Mickey Mouse. The copyrights on Mickey Mouse expire after 95 years, which is this year. Disney created Mickey Mouse in 1928 and will extend the 95 year mark this year to 2024. The consequence of this will be that anyone can do whatever they want with the character, whether you like it or not.
Mickey Mouse’s terrible projects
Since Disney lost the copyrights to Mickey Mouse, the character has been free for people like app developers, video game makers and film makers to use. This caused a hype among these artists and they announced things like movies with a defaced Mickey Mouse.
A film called “Mickey’s Mouse Trap” has been announced and will be released in March. The description said that someone wearing a mask that looked like Mickey was chasing young men and women with a knife. The film’s director, Jamie Bailey, later said: “He kills people” and “He doesn’t have a personality beyond that”.
This is not the first time this has happened. Last year, Winnie the Pooh lost his copyrights and a film called ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” was released. This film grossed about $1.75 million domestically, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. In addition, a second film of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” will be released in March this year.
A shooting game called “Mouse” is also expected to be released in 2025. It will be a black and white shooting game with Mickey-like mice as characters. But this will not be the only video game. Just last week, the developers announced another video game called “Infestation: Origins” alongside the “Mouse” video game.
The impact of the expired copyrights on Disney
Disney declined to comment on any of the projects for the time being. The impact on the company and its shares is unknown. We will have to see what happens in the future and how investors feel about it. However, Disney has said that it will continue to protect more modern versions of Mickey Mouse, “as well as work to protect against consumer confusion caused by unauthorised uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters”. It must be hard for the makers of Mickey Mouse to see other people doing these ugly things to their characters. But all they can do is accept the fact that it’s possible now, and that Mickey Mouse will be available to everyone in the future.
[finviz ticker= DIS]
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