Yesterday, Winnie the Pooh which originally came out in 1926 became part of the public domain, so any studio can use the IP for properties.
This is 60 years after Disney acquired the rights to Winnie the Pooh in 1961 and they’ve turned it into one of their highest grossing franchises.
It has made 81 billion dollars, with merchandise being 80 billion of that and movies/DVD’s being the other billion.
To show how big of a deal that is for Disney, that’s at a tie with Mickey Mouse at 82 billion, which also enters the public domain in 2024.
Some people are saying this is a big deal for Disney, because they’ve sold 1-3 billion a year of Winnie the Pooh merchandise the last decade.
Reason it’s not is how Disney actually has always monetized and dominated public domain properties.
Alice in Wonderland
Cinderella
Sleeping Beauty
The Jungle Book
All public domain, but people look at them and think Disney.
Reason is one word.
Tantor
Tarzan is now in the public domain and globally was in most places, but Disney in their 1999 Tarzan film went away from the books to introduce an original character, named Tantor.
Any studio can make a Tarzan movie, but no studio can make one with that elephant, which was part of many people’s first introduction to Tarzan and valuable to the story people grew up on.
On top of that for Tarzan, they have the following.
The Phil Collins songs for the movie.
A series of original characters introduced in the follow up Disney Channel show.
The rights to the designs for the characters in the movie.
Warner made a Tarzan movie in 2016 and it bombed horribly, making 350m on a budget of 180m, which put it for a 50m loss.
It had Tarzan, but very little IP people know.
Which to compare that, Disney has made money on Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Jungle Book and all other live action versions of their animated war chest, public or private domain.
Reason is that with every public domain property, Disney has rights on the surrounding property.
For Winnie the Pooh, it applies to a lot.
The music people know
Rights to movies/shows
Designs for merchandise
Things which were built over half a century and won’t be hard to duplicate.
With this, I’m sure Netflix and other groups attempt to do something Winnie the Pooh related, but they’d likely just be advertising Disney merchandise.