Winnie the Pooh becomes a killer. Where is remix culture going?
As classic tales, characters become public domain, anything goes.
LOS ANGELES — The giant stuffed bear, its face a twisted smile, lumbers across the screen. Menacing music swells. Shadows mask unknown threats. Christopher Robin begs for his life. And is that a sledgehammer about to pulverize a minor character’s head?
Thus unfolds the trailer for the 2023 movie “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” a slasher-film riff on A.A. Milne’s beloved characters, brought to you by ... the expiration of copyright and the arrival of the classic children’s novel into the American public domain.
We were already living in an era teeming with remixes and re-purposing, fan fictions and mashups. Then began a parade of characters and stories, led by Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse with many more to follow marching into the public domain, where anyone can shape something into new stories and ideas.
After a two-decade drought brought on by congressional extensions of the copyright period in 1998, works again began entering the public domain — becoming available for use without licensing or payment — in 2019.
The public began to notice in 2022, when Winnie the Pooh was freed for use as the 95-year copyright period elapsed on the novel that introduced him. That made possible “Blood and Honey,” a sequel, which dropped last month, a forthcoming third, and plans for a “Poohniverse” of twisted public domain characters including Bambi and Pinocchio.
Pooh going public was followed this year by a moment many thought would never come: the expiration of copyright on the original version of Mickey Mouse, as he appeared in the 1928 Walt Disney short “Steamboat Willie.”
Classic characters, new stories, fresh mashups. Will it be all be a bonanza for makers? Are we entering a heyday of cross-generational collaboration or a plummet in intellectual property values as audiences get sick of seeing variations of the same old stories?
Films from Hollywood’s early talkie era have started to become public. King Kong, who has one of his enormous feet in the public domain already because of complications between companies that own a piece of him, will shed his remaining chains in 2029.
Then, in the 2030s, Superman will soar into the public domain, followed in quick succession by Batman, the Joker and Wonder Woman.
The possibility of new stories is vast. So is the possibility of repetition. Classic stories and characters could get, well a bit tiresome.
“I don’t feel like it’s going to make that big a difference,” says Phil Johnston, an Oscar nominee who co-wrote Disney’s 2011 “Wreck It-ralph” and co-wrote and co-directed its sequel, 2018’s “Ralph Breaks the Internet.”
“Like, ‘Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey’ was a novelty, made a bit of a splash, I guess. But if someone makes ‘Steamboat Willie’ (into) a jet ski movie or something, who cares?” he says.
Many creators were clearly anxious to do something with “The Great Gatsby,” which has been subject to several reinterpretations in very different flavors since it became public in 2021, says Jennifer Jenkins, a professor of law and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of Public Domain.
“We have our feminist retellings of `The Great Gatsby,’ where Jordan gets to tell the story from her perspective, Daisy gets to tell the story from her perspective,” Jenkins says. “These are things that you can do with public domain work . ... ”
But the newly available works and characters are arriving after years of parent corporations demanding that every creation be tied to their intellectual property. And with some big, “Barbie”-sized exceptions, the returns are growing thinner.