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Betty Boop, Blondie join Mickey, Winnie the Pooh in public domain
The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn’t quite have the sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of Mickey or Winnie. But ever since 2019 — the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions — every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, for whom New Year’s Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.”
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.
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. There are reportedly already three Popeye slasher flicks in the works after Popeye and Tintin joined public domain in 2025.
Other forms of artistic endeavor are also exiting copyright protection. Books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:
— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.
And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became essential parody fodder for decades, become public via the “Elson Basic Readers” textbooks.
As for movies, more classics are entering public domain. A year after their film debut, “The Cocoanuts,” the Marx Brothers’ beloved “Animal Crackers” joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics.
A pair of Oscar best picture winners, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award was known as “Outstanding Production” then, and the Academy Awards eligibility period didn’t sync with the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the titles due.
As in the last several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public:
— Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Embraceable You,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me” and “I Got Rhythm.”
— “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
— “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
(AP Photos Ron Frehm, Cheryl Gerber)
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