Winnie-the-Pooh entered public domain last year, allowing for any creator to do what they wanted with the characters, so long as they didn’t violate Disney’s trademarked design of the adaptation the company made in 1966. So far the result is indeed a slasher film, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. The character design, which is creepy as hell, comes close to Disney’s, but only if you discount the Deliverance and Texas Chainsaw Massacre influences. By all accounts the movie sucks. Surprise.
Winnie the Pooh (sans hyphen) reportedly earns the Disney company $3-6 billion a year, roughly a quarter of their total annual sales. It’s too early to tell if characters they’ve licensed becoming public domain will actually hurt their income, but if the competition is as bad as the horror film, they should be okay. Not that I care about their profits, but I think it bolsters the argument that the public domain doesn’t threaten the viability of legacy intellectual properties. US copyright protections are too long and the length doesn’t serve the public interest, nor that of artists. Retaining copyright for my lifetime plus 20 years for my kids to do something with my work (may they have better sales strategies than I do) seems long enough to me.
Looking forward to Pooh-nado and its sequels!