As many iconic works have entered into the public domain since 2019, there has been a surge of horror film adaptations. These horror adaptations have received strong critiques for their deviation from or failure to say something unique about their source material. Ultimately, this criticism has spilled over into skepticism about the public domain itself, framing it as a creative dead-end. This critique, however, overlooks the underlying benefit of the public domain: the ability for anyone, not just corporations, to create their own version/adaptation of the same work. Despite consistent criticism surrounding public domain horror adaptations, a further study of these works reveals underlying contemporary industry conditions that lead to their creation, and demonstrates the enduring importance of the public domain in enabling creative freedom beyond pure corporate control.
These adaptations exist within the current characteristics of contemporary filmmaking; a type of filmmaking largely driven by financial risk-aversion that relies on Intellectual Property (IP) adaptations rather than original stories to guarantee audience attendance and big money earnings. Look no further than April 2025’s A Minecraft Movie that relied on the Minecraft IP to pull in over $150 million in a single weekend in the United States and Canada, as well as over $900 million worldwide across its theatrical run. As studios continue to embrace IP and risk-aversion as rules of the game, creators must either find ways to craft original stories within these confines, or find another way to keep the cost down, such as working in a historically proven low-cost genre: Horror.
Horror films are a popular selection for filmmakers as they can be made more economically compared to other genres by utilizing fewer elements such as limited locations, small casts, and visual ambiguity to enact the horror/unease. There is a long lineage of economical horror films that set off careers including John Carpenter’s Halloween, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, and Mike Flanagan’s Absentia. Each film was made for less than $500,000, unadjusted for inflation, and launched careers of well known and successful filmmakers. While each film is hugely varied and different from one another, they are all connected by one common element: being original stories. But when IP is heavily guarded and protected by risk-averse studios, it makes sense to turn to the public domain for creative freedom as an independent filmmaker working with budgetary constrictions.
Though shaped by the same constraints and standards, the resulting films vary wildly. Some horror films adapted from public domain works lean heavily on shock value while others take a more reflexive approach, using the tools of horror to comment on copyright itself. In 2022, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey utilized the shock elements to draw an audience, while 2025’s Screamboat embedded a metatextual critique of copyright lengths.
In 2022, shortly after 1926’s Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain, filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield, whose earlier indie films received little attention, announced Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. By adapting the Pooh stories, Frake-Waterfield utilized their near-hundred year history and public recognition to garner immediate attention to his new production, highlighting the benefits that IP provides even in an area of filmmaking that is historically amenable to emerging filmmakers.
Since its release, critics and viewers alike have highlighted the deviation from the childhood source material through a gory slasher adaptation. These critiques are reasonable and definitely feel notable to viewers as a dead-eyed Pooh Bear and tusk-bearing Piglet eat Eeyore. However jarring the contrast of the adaptation to the source material may be, it does not undercut the value of the public domain. In creating this adaptation, it acts as a celebration of the public domain as a vehicle for filmmakers and other creatives to remix old works for their own creative and commercial benefit and not just the benefit of select corporate IP holders.
The Blood and Honey film is an adaptation that does not utilize the Pooh stories for much more than audience familiarity. It utilizes the public domain works primarily as a shock factor to attract audience attention. Generally it grafts the iconography of these stories onto an indie horror film that would remain fundamentally unchanged if all of the Pooh elements were stripped away. Beneath the surface of this iconography is a standard slasher film playing in the mold of what has come before.
This adaptation does not diminish the original stories that still exist and are available to everyone. Nor does it create a new monopoly on the stories, as these Pooh stories remain in the public domain. Instead, it highlights the underlying conditions of filmmaking that surround the film during the time in which it was made. By entering the public domain in the 2020s, newly public domain works give rise to modern adaptations that reflect the popular trends of the moment. They fit within the confines of the corporate, risk-averse IP conditions that drive filmmaking. And yes, many are becoming franchises, itself a reflection of the current moment. Frake-Waterfield has expanded upon his original Blood and Honey film with a direct sequel as well as the greater Twisted Childhood Universe, pulling from other public domain works such as the original Bambi and Peter Pan.
Similarly to Blood and Honey, the recent Screamboat adaptation of Steamboat Willie by Steven LaMorte is also a grafting of a public domain work onto a more standard narrative. In a 2025 interview with Paul Marsh, LaMorte reveals that he had been working on a Staten Island Ferry horror film since the early 2010s. However, following Steamboat Willie’s passage into the public domain in 2024, LaMorte reworked the film into an adaptation. In contrast to Blood and Honey, Screamboat functions as a metatextual film commenting not only on the original work, but also the nature of the public domain. It is not solely a horror film based on a public domain work, but a horror film about corporate copyright terms and how these long terms may alienate creators from their original works. This perspective becomes especially vivid in the film’s midsection, which recounts the story of Willie’s separation from Walt Disney in a visually striking animated flashback.
Utilizing animation reminiscent of the original Steamboat Willie cartoon, the film recounts an old man’s tale of how Willie was separated from his creator, an animated depiction of Walt Disney. Much like in real life, the film too omits inclusion of Ub Iwerks as a creator of Mickey Mouse, reinforcing how authorship itself can be obscured by copyright mythologies. In the course of the tale, Walt falls overboard leaving Willie behind locked away in the ferry’s underbelly. Upon Willie’s release, after ninety-five years, he goes off on a rampage killing and terrorizing anyone that he comes across. Willie’s violence is framed not just as horror, but as retribution—an eruption of neglected cultural memory finally freed from captivity.
The middle animation segment of Screamboat utilizes the public domain nature of Steamboat Willie by formally adapting something that was previously restricted by copyright. This unique passage during the film’s middle point sticks in the viewer’s mind, elevating the work a step beyond pure shock value. It instead evokes an iconic character to examine the legacy of copyright control. Through Willie’s violent acts, the film suggests that long copyright terms can turn cultural icons into imprisoned relics. Screamboat critiques the copyright maximalism that the Disney company helped enshrine, using one of Disney’s earliest icons. Together, Blood and Honey and Screamboat reflect two poles of public domain horror—one exploitative, the other expressive. But both are artifacts of a specific cultural and creative moment.
Placed in the context of this broader moment in filmmaking, public domain horror is not an aberration but a logical outcome. Despite this, the context that surrounds the films now will not always be in living memory. In many years, when reflecting on this particular filmmaking environment, these horror adaptations might be seen as an odd and quirky moment of filmmaking. In actuality, these films are emblematic of the cultural moment in which they were produced, highlighting an evolving landscape of intellectual property and creative voice. Ultimately, these films probably won’t reach the same cultural impact as adaptations of other public domain works like 1961’s West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet) or 1959’s Ben-Hur (Ben-Hur). Still, they will remain important and interesting cultural artifacts that inform future generations as snapshots and reflections of the conditions in which they were made. Looking back at the past through creative works informs us of the societal and creative mores of that moment, and helps to anchor us in a contextual reference point to our own moment. Maybe these films will be celebrated themselves when they inevitably enter the public domain… in nearly 100 years.
Screams in the Vault: Public Domain Horror in the Age of IP by Sterling Dudley is marked with CC0 1.0
This is a powerful and deeply necessary reflection on the work the Internet Archive does. The metaphor of “Screams in the Vault” is hauntingly perfect. It moves the perception of the Archive beyond a simple utility for finding broken links or old software and reframes it as what it truly is: a vast, uncurated mausoleum of human experience, complete with all its joy, discovery, and profound pain.
The article’s central idea—that archivists are not just technicians but also guardians of deeply sensitive, often traumatic, digital artifacts—is something that needs to be discussed more openly. The examples it brings up are spot on. On one hand, you have the “screams” of societal trauma: the raw, unfiltered footage from conflict zones, the desperate final posts from citizen journalists in crises, or the digital records of injustices that would otherwise be erased. Preserving these is a sacred duty for future accountability and understanding. We see this in real-time with the ongoing efforts to archive evidence of the war in Ukraine or the digital remnants of protests worldwide. Without the Archive’s “vault,” the first draft of history would be far more sanitized and controlled.
However, the article rightly forces us to confront the other side. From the perspective of the individual, what about the “screams” that were never intended for an eternal audience? The blog of someone who has passed away, containing their private struggles; the frantic social media posts of a family during a personal tragedy; the ephemeral data from a defunct service that holds the digital ghosts of our former selves. From a user’s or researcher’s standpoint, this data is invaluable. But from a human perspective, it raises complex questions about consent, dignity, and the right to be forgotten. The Archive’s mission to save everything inevitably clashes with the individual’s need for privacy and peace.
My own reflection is that this piece highlights the impossible burden we’ve placed on institutions like the Internet Archive. We task them with preserving our entire digital civilization—a cacophony of human expression—without giving them the societal, financial, or ethical frameworks to adequately manage the emotional and moral weight of that collection. The “screams” aren’t just in the data; they are also in the silence of the archivists who must bear witness to it all. This article is a crucial reminder that as we build this unprecedented record of humanity, we must also build a culture of care, context, and compassion around it. Thank you for this sobering and vital piece.