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35 Movies That Made Public Domain Characters Cool Again

United States copyright law is a real beast. There was a time, not so long ago, when any creative work would fall into the public domain—meaning the original rights to the work had lapsed, allowing anyone to make use of the characters and ideas within it—after 42 years. Then, in the 1970s, the Walt Disney company realized it would lose control of some of their chief moneymakers (like, oh, Mickey