Murderous 'Screamboat Willie' Makes Mickey Mouse Look Utterly Horrific—And Hilarious
Creative copyright is weird. While you couldn't go out and make your own Star Wars movie without getting sued by Lucasfilm, you can, as of this moment, make a horror movie, in which a version of Mickey Mouse is a murderous killer rodent stalking his victims on a vintage steamboat. The reason why? The 1928 short cartoon, "Steamboat Willie," is now in the public domain, just like Winnie the Pooh, Sherlock Holmes, and certain Hemingway novels.
The origin of the new horror movie, Screamboat Willie, comes from writer-director Steven LaMorte, who previously made a Grinch-inspired horror movie called The Mean One in 2022. This trend also popped up in the low-budget 2023 horror flick, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, which was directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield, and created a mini-franchise consisting of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, which is set to debut in February of this year.
However, Screamboat Willie is not part of that "Twisted Childhood Universe," but instead, a kind of rival franchise that is doing something very similar. Screamboat Willie will star David Howard Thornton (famous for the Terrifier series) as the killer mouse, and stand-in for Mickey. LaMorte, also told Variety that he hopes audiences find the movie and Thorton's performance as "hilarious and murderously entertaining."
In short, although an actual child would be terrified by the existence of Screamboat Willie, the film itself sounds like it is as much of a kooky parody as anything else. Which, in some ways, is fair. The original 1928, "Steamboat Willie" was iconic, but is also somewhat bizarre in retrospect. Mickey has to peel potatoes as a punishment in the original short, as well as try to transport some livestock. There's also a character named Pete in there who practices projectile tobacco spitting. You know, real wholesome stuff.
Overall, it's not like the source material is squeaky clean. So, Screamboat Willie won't really ruin the legacy of the original, because there's not really a legacy to ruin. The 1928 short, "Steamboat Willie," is often cited as the debut of Mickey Mouse, though he did show up in an early short called "Plane Crazy" the same year, in which tried to imitate Charles Lindbergh. No word if that story is getting turned into a horror movie next. While the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey is now in the public domain, it's worth noting that later, more familiar versions of Mickey Mouse remain the sole property of Disney. Imitators beware.