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10 Works Entering the Public Domain in 2025

Popeye, Tintin, and ‘The Maltese Falcon’ are among the works being turned over to the public on January 1.

ByJake Rossen|
Popeye will soon be at the mercy of low-budget filmmakers.
Popeye will soon be at the mercy of low-budget filmmakers. | Jesse Grant/GettyImages

If it’s your dream to produce a Popeye cartoon, movie, or comic without fear of being sued, you’ll soon have your chance. The spinach-fueled sailor is one of many characters and works that will lose their copyright status and enter the public domain on January 1, 2025.

While the minutiae of copyright law is substantial, you don’t need to pass the bar to understand that in the U.S., copyrights of creative works (films, books, art, music, plays) expire after 95 years—effectively giving the public free reign to distribute them and create derivatives works. The law has opened the door to such horror titles as Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) and the forthcoming Bambi: The Reckoning.

The properties entering the public domain in 2025 were first released in 1929—or, in the case of sound recordings, 1924. Here’s an incomplete list:

  1. Popeye (Character)
  2. Tintin (Character)
  3. The Cocoanuts (Film)
  4. The Broadway Melody (Film)
  5. Blackmail (Film)
  6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (Book)
  7. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Book)
  8. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Book)
  9. Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck (Book)
  10. “Singin’ in the Rain” by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown (Musical Composition)

Popeye presents an interesting study of copyright law. As of next year, only the character as he appeared in a 1929 Thimble Theatre comic strip is public domain. Since he didn’t start eating spinach until 1931, featuring that characteristic in a derivative work may warrant a call from Popeye’s rights holders, Hearst Holdings.

Hearst also holds a trademark to the Popeye name which doesn’t expire, but it’s unlikely they could weaponize it to block any public domain efforts. So long as a new Popeye work doesn’t assert it was created by Hearst, it should be legally protected from retaliation.

The same is true of Mickey Mouse, who famously entered public control in 2024 but only as he appeared in the short Steamboat Willie. Now, because Mickey started speaking and sporting white gloves in 1929, it’s legal to depict the character as most people picture him today.

The list features a number of milestones in film. The Cocoanuts was the first feature film to star the Marx Brothers, Blackmail was Alfred Hitchcock’s first movie with sound, and The Broadway Melody won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It’s also a big year for classic books. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon are all free to circulate or adapt from 2025 onward.

Per Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, loss of copyright is vital to artistic expression, allowing creators to reimagine existing material or screen it without running afoul of corporations. They give Wicked as an example. If L. Frank Baum’s Oz books weren’t in the public domain, Gregory Maguire’s reimagining of the world (not to mention the musical it inspired and this year’s movie adaptation) may have never came to be.

While Wicked was a thoughtful extension, public domain also means that characters may be reimagined in ways fans may not appreciate. Next year will bring Popeye the Slayer Man, a horror film in which the sailor stalks a group of friends who sneak into a spinach canning factory. It’s one of three Popeye horror films planned, though they’ll have to manage without Bluto—Popeye's nemesis didn't debut until 1932.

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