More Mickey, Plus Popeye, Tintin, and More Enter Public Domain

Get ready, nerds: a whole host of iconic works of art — from film, music, animation, books, and more—are coming into the public domain in 2025. Last year’s Public Domain Day was a big deal because it included the first-ever iteration of Disney‘s brand-defining Mickey Mouse. This year sees dozens of more Mickey animations entering the fold, alongside a host of other notable titles and characters, like Tintin, Popeye (quick, somebody call Genndy Tartakovsky), “The Skeleton Dance” from Disney’s SIlly Symphonies, alongside books like William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Oh, and did we mention we’re also getting the Marx Brothers’ first feature film, as well as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford’s first sound films?

Needless to say, that sound you hear is a million writers running to adapt Popeye and Tintin into the next great/bad horror film, and/or remake one of the other endlessly interesting pieces of American artistry entering the fold of public works available for use without copyright and/or permission. Even more fun and helpful? Duke University’s School of Law created a fun little video (which we saw via Gizmodo) to go along with their extensive write-up, showcasing some of the highlights of what’s now considered free-to-use. Just pop on down to the next section below and get ready to learn a BUNCH!

What Is Public Domain Day and What Even Is The Public Domain?

Now, you may be wondering to yourself, “why in the heck is ANYONE trying to make me find copyright law interesting right now?” but just humor us for a moment, if you will. Because while we may be loath to exist in a sequel-reboot-sidequel-spin-off culture obsessed with preexisting IP (intellectual property), it would be foolish to ignore the ways in which the availability of this art to tell other stories is a profoundly good thing for culture and society, too. History tends to repeat itself (or at least it often rhymes), after all, and what is art for if not to illuminate that history, and teach us lessons that can help us in the present and future? How else do we shed light on ourselves and the world around us if not through reading, watching, and viewing art? And what time do we need that sort of insight more than right now?

As they put it on the Duke website:

In an historical moment when many are inclined to despair, to believe that the problems and divisions of our society are too intractable, too complex for hope, Faulkner speaks to us of “the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” But Faulkner’s work was neither ephemeral nor doomed. To use his words again, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Why care about the public domain? That is why.

OK, OK — Just Give Me A List Of Names I Should Care About

You should know, this is just a highlight reel, really. There are thousands of more names to peruse thanks to the University of Pennsylvania’s Catalog of Copyright Entries.

BOOKS AND PLAYS

• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
• Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
• Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
• John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (Steinbeck’s first novel)
• Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
• Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story
• Patrick Hamilton, Rope
• Arthur Wesley Wheen, the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
• Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That
• E. B. White and James Thurber, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (only the original German version, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter)
• Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
• Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee), The Roman Hat Mystery

FILMS

• A dozen more Mickey Mouse animations (including Mickey’s first talking appearance in The Karnival Kid)
• The Cocoanuts, directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley (the first Marx Brothers feature film)
• The Broadway Melody, directed by Harry Beaumont (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
• The Hollywood Revue of 1929, directed by Charles Reisner (featuring the song “Singin’ in the Rain”)
• The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks (the first Silly Symphony short from Disney)
• Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s first sound film)
• Hallelujah, directed by King Vidor (one of the first films from a major studio with an all-African-American cast)
• The Wild Party, directed by Dorothy Arzner (Clara Bow’s first “talkie”)
• Welcome Danger, directed by Clyde Bruckman and Malcolm St. Clair (the first full-sound comedy starring Harold Lloyd)
• On With the Show, directed by Alan Crosland (the first all-talking, all-color, feature-length film)
• Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora), directed by G.W. Pabst
• Show Boat, directed by Harry A. Pollard (adaptation of the novel and musical)
• The Black Watch, directed by John Ford (Ford’s first sound film)
• Spite Marriage, directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton (Keaton’s final silent feature)
• Say It with Songs, directed by Lloyd Bacon (follow-up to The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool)
• Dynamite, directed by Cecil B. DeMille (DeMille’s first sound film)
• Gold Diggers of Broadway, directed Roy Del Ruth

CHARACTERS

• E. C. Segar, Popeye (in “Gobs of Work” from the Thimble Theatre comic strip)
• Hergé (Georges Remi), Tintin (in “Les Aventures de Tintin” from the magazine Le Petit Vingtième)

MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS AND SOUND RECORDINGS

• Singin’ in the Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
• Ain’t Misbehavin’, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. “Fats” Waller & Harry Brooks (from the musical Hot Chocolates)
• An American in Paris, George Gershwin
• Boléro, Maurice Ravel
• (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. “Fats” Waller & Harry Brooks (a song about racial injustice from the musical Hot Chocolates)
• Tiptoe Through the Tulips, lyrics by Alfred Dubin, music by Joseph Burke
• Happy Days Are Here Again, lyrics by Jack Yellen, music by Milton Ager (the theme song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign)
• What Is This Thing Called Love?, by Cole Porter (from Porter’s musical Wake Up and Dream)
• Am I Blue?, lyrics by Grant Clarke, music by Harry Akst
• You Were Meant for Me, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
• Honey, lyrics and music by Seymour Simons, Haven Gillespie, and Richard A. Whiting
• Waiting for a Train, lyrics and music by Jimmie Rodgers
• My Way’s Cloudy, recorded by Marian Anderson
• Rhapsody in Blue, recorded by George Gershwin
• Shreveport Stomp, recorded by Jelly Roll Morton
• Lazy, recorded by The Georgians
• Of All The Wrongs You Done To Me, recorded by Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams’ Blue Five
• Deep Blue Sea Blues, recorded by Clara Smith
• The Gouge of Armour Avenue, recorded by Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra featuring Big Charlie Green
• Mama’s Gone, Good Bye, recorded by Ray Miller and his Orchestra
• It Had To Be You, recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra and by Marion Harris
• California Here I Come, recorded by Al Jolson