New films, games, and technologies are always announced with the new year. As I mentioned in my last Newsletter Article, “Mickey Mouse’ Turns Public Domain”, Mickey Mouse (in his original Steamboat Willie era) has officially entered the public domain, and people can profit from this original version.

On January 1st, a teaser trailer for a Mickey Mouse-fronted slasher film called “Mickey’s Mouse Trap” was released, showing the beloved childhood character as a vindictive killer at a carnival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAg7laUDXX4). A video game called “Infestation 88” was also announced. In it, the player needs to find and destroy Mickey Mouse, the source of a pandemic illness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jfuqOwhNK0). There is even a digital currency now named $MICKEY (https://www.cryptotimes.io/mickeys-public-domain-status-sparks-mickey-crypto-surge/) as well as a text-to-image model AI named “Mickey-1928” that allows users to develop images based on the iconic original mouse (https://huggingface.co/Pclanglais/Mickey-1928).

Only time will tell how good these works will be or how well they will be remembered.