Mickey Mouse Deserves Better Than Cheap, Terrible Horror Movies

We're two days into 2024, and already today, ComicBook.com has run an article titled "Another Mickey Mouse Horror Movie Announced Because Why Not?." It was the obvious and inevitable result of the flurry of attention Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey received last year. The indie horror movie, which had just a 3% "rotten" score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, nevertheless earned over $5 million against its $100,000 budget, and has a sequel greenlit, with its director also looking at movies based on other public domain kids' properties like Peter Pan. In addition to the two movies already available in the wake of Steamboat Willie hitting the public domain, there's also already a horror game featuring the OG Mickey Mouse.

Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, the first two cartoons to feature Mickey and Minnie Mouse, lapsed into the public domain on Monday, meaning that Disney no longer owns the exclusive copyright to the shorts or the characters and imagery featured in them. The characters remain trademarked, so anyone hoping to create their own original art using Mickey, Minnie, and any other elements from those cartoons has to do so in a way that doesn't create brand confusion...but there's no way for Disney to legally stop them making the art.

After Winnie the Pooh (and Piglet, too!) lapsed into the public domain, an indie filmmaker developed Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. The movie is a slasher movie featuring grown men in Pooh and Piglet costumes, engaged in spree killing. The success of that movie guaranteed that Mickey and Minnie would get a similar treatment when they came "up for grabs," and in just a few days, there are already three major announcements. This is predictable but also, ultimately, probably a pretty terrible idea.

Not for legal reasons. Yes, Disney may try to take some of these folks to court -- but after successfully lobbying to extend copyright periods twice during Mickey's lifetime, the company finally seemed to give up on that legal strategy this time around. They have signaled that they will vigorously defend both their trademark, and the copyright that still applies to later versions of Mickey and the rest...but it does not appear they plan to launch a bunch of doomed, bad-faith lawsuits.

Instead, churning out low-effort projects based on a meme is a terrible idea because it seems likely the success of Blood and Honey is not a thing that you can replicate at scale. Yes, there's a sequel coming out, and it has spawned a handful of low-budget imitators...but in the scheme of things, its impressive profit margin was tied directly to its ultra-low budget. And along with its terrible reviews, Blood and Honey only managed to impress half its audience on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting that even the viewers who were open to the idea of a low-budget Pooh slasher movie weren't blown away by the end result.

There is substantial curiosity right now in "Mickey Mouse horror," but it seems unlikely to generate real money for anyone. That's probably good for creators, because a bigger box office haul would probably come with increased litigation risk from Disney -- but it also means it's hardly worth doing, on a financial level.

More importantly, it's not worth doing on a creative level. The idea, of the public domain is to allow artists to tap into our shared cultural heritage in order to create art. If these Mickey Horror projects are anything like Blood and Honey, they are a textbook definition of "content," rather than art.

The idea of making a shabby Z-movie slasher, and then just sticking a bootleg mask on them to represent whatever character just entered the public domain, is self-evidently something bound to create very few good projects, and quickly diminishing returns. There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a subversive spin on beloved characters, but for it to be meaningful, it has to have value beyond the premise. "What if Mickey Mouse, but violent?" is a fun prompt for a short story, but if you don't take time to develop anything of value beyond the prompt itself, why do it?

There's value to the public domain (hell, many of Disney's successful movies are based on properties that nobody owns!), and there will doubtless be some people in the coming months and years who create interesting art with Mickey Mouse. Those people are almost certainly not the ones rushing to get a trailer out while the social media news cycle is still buzzing about Steamboat Willie.

At the same time as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot movies are slowly lapsing into the public domain in the U.S., filmmaker Kenneth Branagh has made three terrific movies starring the character, all of which have been successful at the box office. Granted, those are all based on books that are still protected by copyright (there are currently five novels and a short story collection in the public domain based on the popular detective), but it goes to show that characters -- even those who are a century old -- are still capable of inspiring great art. It's a disservice not just to the characters, but to the audience, to mail it in with a lazy product designed to make a quick buck and get some attention on Tiktok.