[XIII]

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of misinformation and confusion regarding what can and can’t be done with the Steamboat Willie Mickey. It’s severely limited, and the lapse of copyright mainly just allows for the original cartoon to be released by other content providers like we see with many other old movies which crop up in varying quality on a number of DVDs and streaming platforms. Even then, anyone looking to share the content will need to be careful where they source it as any later versions (e.g. Versions Disney has restored or coloured) will still be covered by copyright depending on what year that version was released.

Most importantly, the name “Mickey Mouse” is trademarked (along with many of the character’s attributes) so I doubt that slasher film - or any other “new” content trying to use “Mickey” - will be seeing the light of day with its current title.

One thing Disney did years ago was to trademark the bit in Steamboat Willie where Mickey is whistling and driving the boat which is in the Walt Disney Animation Studios logo so you cannot use it to sell merchandise or promote a collection using that particular image.

Mickey's not the only trademarked to the hilt character, Tarzan fell into the public domain years ago but the name Tarzan is trademarked by the ERB estate so you cannot make anything Tarzan related without going through the estate, even the iconic cry is trademarked.