The earliest iteration of Mickey Mouse is on a rampage, barely two days in the public domain.
Slashed free of Disney’s copyright as of Monday, the iconic character from Steamboat Willie is already the focus of two horror films.
On Monday, just hours after the 1928 short entered the public domain, a trailer for Mickey’s Mouse Trap dropped on YouTube. Another yet-to-be-titled film was announced on Tuesday.
Photo: MM Trap Ltd via AP
Steamboat Willie featured early versions of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, it was the third cartoon featuring the duo they made, but the first to be released.
In it, a more menacing Mickey, bearing more resemblance to rat than mouse, captains a boat and makes musical instruments out of other animals.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that the first projects announced are seemingly low-budget and campy slasher movies — and not unprecedented. Winnie the Pooh — sans red shirt — entered the public domain in 2022. Scarcely a year later, he was notching up a heavy body count in the microbudget Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
In the trailer for Mickey’s Mouse Trap, directed by Jamie Bailey, what appears to be a human in a comically small Mickey mask terrorizes a group of young people at an arcade.
“A place for fun. A place for friends. A place for hunting,” text flashed during the trailer reads. “The mouse is out.”
“We just wanted to have fun with it all. I mean it’s Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse murdering people,” director Jamie Bailey said in a statement cited by trade publications. “It’s ridiculous. We ran with it and had fun doing it and I think it shows.”
No release date has been set.
The second movie is from director Steven LaMorte, who previously directed a horror parody featuring the Grinch, which is not in the public domain (the movie is thus called The Mean One).
“A late-night boat ride turns into a desperate fight for survival in New York City when a mischievous mouse becomes a monstrous reality,” is the logline for the untitled film, a post on LaMorte’s Instagram said.
“Steamboat Willie has brought joy to generations, but beneath that cheerful exterior lies a potential for pure, unhinged terror,” LaMorte said in a release cited by trade publications.
The movie has yet to begin production.
With the expiration of the 95-year copyright, the public is allowed to use only the initial versions of Mickey and Minnie — not the more familiar character designs.
LaMorte told Variety that the producers of his film are working with a legal team so as not to run afoul of Disney, and would call their raging rodent Steamboat Willie instead of Mickey Mouse.
“We are doing our due diligence to make sure there’s no question or confusion of what we’re up to,” he said.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS