Popeye Enters the Public Domain - And the World of Slasher Films

In 2025, the spinach-slurping brawler Popeye enters the public domain as he first appeared in 1929–and it appears he’s the latest popular children’s character to get a murderous makeover. But the move isn’t popular with everyone, and it might actually not be as simple as simply having Popeye’s copyright protection finally expire.

Are we doomed to watch every character from our childhood reimagined as slasher villains?

What possible roadblocks still exist for Popeye the Slayer Man? And what else might be on the horizon for Popeye and other characters who have already entered the public domain, or soon will?

A (Very) Brief History of Popeye

On January 17th, 1929, Popeye first debuted in a newspaper comic, Thimble Theater, created by E.C. Seger for King Features. The character caught on with readers as he and his cast of friends and archrivals got into a series of outlandish situations.

He soon met a woman senior to him by ten years, Olive Oyl, who first showed up in Thimble Theater in 1919, and set out to woo her. In 1931, amid the economic chaos and global unrest of the Great Depression, Popeye popped his first can of spinach.

A year later, in 1932, he met his greatest challenge and rival for Olive Oyl’s affections, the boorish Bluto (who was renamed Brutus in 1957 due to confusion about who properly owned the rights to his original name).

In 1933, Popeye’s first animated foray came during a Betty Boop cartoon reel; later that year, in Thimble Theater, Popeye adopted a son, Swee’pea, who was left on his doorstep by parents unknown. In the cartoons, Swee’pea was Olive Oyl’s charge, although it’s unclear whether he was hers either biologically or through adoption.

The character took off, helping to sell everything from war bonds during World War II to canned spinach.

His name became an enduring watchword for exasperated parents trying to convince their children to eat their veggies. “You want to grow up to be big and strong, just like Popeye, right?” was a popular refrain which even I myself heard around the dinner table on more than one occasion. During World War II, he was also recruited (if you’ll pardon the expression) into service as the star of US propaganda films, in which he mostly fought the Japanese.

This connection made sense in the context of the time, as the Japanese bombing of the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor would have resonated heavily with a sailor like Popeye.?

After the war, of course, things settled down, and Popeye, Bluto, Olive Oyl, Swee’pea, and the hamburger-scarfing, perennially broke Wimpy (debuted 1931) got back to their usual antics, hijinks, and shenanigans.

The debut of television ushered in another avenue for the Sailor of Steel to connect with audiences, and the rest, as they say, is history. In 1980, comic legend Robin Williams played the gravelly-voiced sailor in a live-action movie co-produced by Disney and Paramount, opposite Shelly Duvalle as Olive Oyl.

The movie flopped with critics and made only around $50 million against a budget of $20 million. Williams later went on the record with his biggest regret about how he played Popeye, lamenting that the voice he chose sounded like “a killer whale farting in a wind tunnel.” Curiously, the set for the movie, in Millieha, Malta, was abandoned after filming–and the locals turned it into a Popeye theme park!

All was fairly quiet for Popeye for a while. A famous chicken chain used Popeye’s likeness to sell its wares until 2012, when the licensing agreement between Popeyes Chicken’s parent corporation and King Features expired. The Popeye comic strip continues to be a syndicated staple in funny pages all over the English-speaking world.

Reviews of the Robin Williams Popeye movie grew kinder and more generous as the movie aged. But no one quite dared try to bring Popeye back to the silver screen in live-action, although a script is apparently circulating, according to Variety. Allegedly, celebrities including Will Smith, Dwayne Johnson, and even MMA star Conor MacGregor have signed up to play the title role, but these all appear to be fan-made trailers with absolutely no legitimate movie backing them.

Given this, it would seem Popeye is stranded in becalmed waters, at least for now.

Except…

Popeye Enters the Public Domain

On January 1st, 2025, the copyright on Popeye’s debut version expires. As has become fashionable (the reader may well imagine an exasperated, long-suffering sigh inserted at this point), another, much darker iteration of Popeye is poised to debut in theaters: Popeye the Slayer Man.

This one is billed as a slasher, although the designation could readily be debated, given that much of the mayhem perpetrated by Popeye in the trailer appears to be a bit more, ahem, hands-on than usual for that sort of movie.

?However, there could be legal problems with this portrayal right off the bat, even leaving aside the objections of Popeye purists.

Remember earlier I pointed out that Popeye didn’t first eat spinach in the comics until 1931–two years after his debut? That aspect, much like Winnie the Pooh’s signature red T-shirt and hunny pots, or Mickey Mouse’s trademark white gloves, remains under copyright, which is currently controlled by Hearst Holdings. Additionally, Hearst Holdings, like Disney, continues to hold the trademarks to Popeye’s name.?

The name itself may and likely won’t be an issue, largely because it would be disproportionately difficult, expensive, and risky for Hearst Holdings to try to use that trademark to prevent derivative works from being developed.

But the fact that the film appears to lean heavily on Popeye’s spinach addiction could very well provide an avenue for Hearst Holdings to step in and try to prevent Popeye the Slayer Man from going public–at least until 2027, when such a portrayal would be fair game.

This gambit could also work against Hearst Holdings by making the subsequent film release all the more controversial, and therefore interesting to viewers who otherwise might not care or would likely not see it because of horror movies like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Mickey’s Mouse Trap, and Bambi: The Reckoning.

The result would be at best a temporary and Pyrrhic victory which would make little to no difference in the final outcome–and has terrific potential to backfire.?

Isn’t This a Bad Thing?

For those who’ve spent their entire lives viewing Popeye as a relatively benign, hapless character who still manages to triumph against the odds in true underdog fashion, there’s not much doubt that a horror-movie version would probably hit some very sour notes.

However, one of the advantages of copyright running out on creative works is that it allows others to envision their own worlds in which these characters can stretch themselves and their limits–or shatter them wholesale.

Whether this is a good or bad thing is, of course, ultimately up to the judgment of the individual; provided the subsequent works don’t violate obscenity laws or infringe upon other copyrights and intellectual property protections in force, the law doesn’t impose value judgments one way or the other.

However, I think it is clear that this trend of beloved children’s characters becoming bloodthirsty killers is not going to let up anytime soon.

For better or worse, there is absolutely nothing in the law preventing it, subject to the caveats stated above.

Once copyright runs out and the public domain takes over, any and everything becomes fair game as far as the characters are concerned, as long as no infringement upon still-protected material can reasonably be asserted.

By and large, I champion and applaud both copyright’s existence and its limits. I think both copyright protection and the public domain are important, valuable, and even necessary to the development of new ideas, new concepts, and new explorations of our world and our own humanity.

What I think of a specific application of this principle is my own affair, and I would not wish to impose my personal belief structure upon someone without it being asked for. Thus, I will end by saying that legally speaking, the creators of Popeye the Slayer Man aren’t doing anything wrong.

The market will decide whether there’s a problem with this assessment by and for themselves–and signal their approval or disapproval with their viewing choices and dollars.

About the Author

John Rizvi is a Registered and Board Certified Patent Attorney, Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property Law, best-selling author, and featured speaker on topics of interest to inventors and entrepreneurs (including TEDx).

His books include "Escaping the Gray" and "Think and Grow Rich for Inventors" and have won critical acclaim including an endorsement from Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks on the hit TV show - Shark Tank, responsible for the successful launch of over 500 products resulting in more than $5 billion in sales worldwide. You can learn more about Professor Rizvi his patent law practice at www.ThePatentProfessor.com

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