Jan. 1 marks the dawn of a new era for Popeye and Tintin. It’s the day the nonagenarian cartoon characters officially enter the U.S. public domain along with a treasure trove of other iconic works.
The copyrights of thousands of films, songs and books expire in 2025, making them instantly available for people to use, share and adapt. The list includes classics like Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, the Fats Waller song “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and the Marx Brothers’ first feature film, The Cocoanuts.
The main thing they have in common is their age — under U.S. copyright law, their terms all expire after 95 years. All of the works entering the public domain next year are from 1929, except for sound recordings, which (because they are covered by a different law) come from 1924.
“Copyright’s awesome … but the fact that rights eventually expire, that’s a good thing, too, because that’s the wellspring for creativity,” says Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which spends months poring over records to compile the most famous examples.
Once in the public domain, these works become fodder for remakes, spinoffs and other adaptations.
That explains the recent wave of horror films starring Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh, characters that entered the public domain in 2024 and 2023 respectively. The trend seems poised to continue: Jenkins says there are already three Popeye slasher flicks in the works.
“They’re capitalizing on the incongruity of this comic book character in a different genre and they get a lot of buzz,” she adds. "(But) when I sit back and look at the universe of remakes of public domain characters or works … the things that we still talk about that stand the test of time don’t tend to be these buzzworthy, kind of ew, grossed-out features.”
More enduring examples include West Side Story drawn from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, screen adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma, Percival Everett’s 2024 book James (a retelling of Huckleberry Finn) and Wicked, the musical-turned-movie prequel to L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz.
But these artifacts don’t only become fodder for big-name directors and authors — they’re available for anyone who wants to use them, from artists to high school orchestra directors.
Jenkins says she gets “adorable emails” from people who are drawing their own little Winnie the Pooh cartoons, and parents whose kids are talented musicians, eager to finally be able to perform certain compositions publicly and post them online.
In other words, the impact of public domain works extends far beyond the box office and Billboard charts.
“I’m excited about those things that not everybody’s going to notice — people really re-discovering some of these older works and engaging with them and appreciating them and making them their own,” she adds.
To view the entire list of works that will soon enter the public domain, click here.
