On the other hand, Disney itself is a talented and successful practitioner of building upon the public domain. In fact, the public domain is Disney’s bread and butter. Frozen was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. The Lion King draws from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Biblical stories, and possibly an epic poem about the founder of the Mali Empire.[3] Fantasia showcases public domain classical music, and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment comes from a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Pinocchio came from stories by Lewis Carroll, The Brothers Grimm, Victor Hugo, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson, and Carlo Collodi.
Disney is both the best and worst when it comes to the public domain. It shows what you should do with it: take something that exists, remix it, release it, and even create a successful media & entertainment company. But efforts to aid extensions to the term of copyright expiration will – if they haven't already – have a deleterious effect.
The Grimm Brothers didn't write the stories, they collected and published folktales. In any case they would have been been out of copyright since Jacob Grimm died in 1863.
Disney didn't mind paying for the rights if they wanted to use material still under copyright, like they did for Bambi or Dumbo or many others.
>The Lion King draws from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Biblical stories, and possibly an epic poem about the founder of the Mali Empire.[3]
I was curious so I researched some more. The story of the founding of the Mali Empire is often told through the epic of Sundiata - born frail and unable to walk, Sundiata faced scorn from his half-brothers in the Mandinka kingdom. Guided by a prophetic destiny, Sundiata and his mother were exiled after the death of his father. During his exile, Sundiata transformed into a formidable leader, forming alliances and gathering supporters. He returned to the kingdom, defeated the oppressive forces and established the Mali Empire
Yes, that’s an important point. When my kids were small, I remember being struck by how much public-domain material I noticed in Disney videos and at Disneyland. Few of the Disney properties were based on original ideas; almost everything was built quite explicitly on other people’s creations, many of which Disney could use for free. This was in the 1990s, when Disney was lobbying to extend copyright terms in order to protect their rights in Mickey Mouse.
Basically - no, the Kimba / Lion King controversy is fake (the Kimba movie often cited as the work copied was actually released 3 years after the Lion King). Check out YMS's review on this exact topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5B1mIfQuo4
Yes, the Kimba TV show is about 30 years older, but this show has basically 0 similarities with TLK. It's like saying The Simpsons is the same as The Princess Bride - yes, some individual shots and scenes are comparable but its only when those are taken out of context, and it completely misses the overarching story/themes/characters. And it also misses the fact that the anime has ~3,000 hours of content in comparison to the 90 minute runtime of TLK.
Seriously, watch the YMS video about it. Apart from some superficial similarities Kimba and The Lion King are majorly different. And Kimba is just bizarre, The Lion King never had humans genocide elephants with tanks and helicopters, Kimba did. The Lion King never had weird racist stuff, Kimba did. Simba never wore Mufasa's hide around to boost his confidence, Kimba did with his father's hide.
This is addressed in the video. Tezuka's work has very little in common with The Lion King. The bulk of the apparent similarity comes from the 1997 movie; if one ignores that there's very little.
That's only in the UK where the children's hospital has perpetual copyright to the first peter pan book/play (I'm not sure about the other works in the series). Outside of the UK it is no longer under copyright. Performances/etc. of it in the UK require royalty payments to the children's hospital. Presumably performances/etc. of derivative works (such as the Disney film) require the same.
The same applies to the King James Bible where the UK Crown (and Cambridge Press) hold the copyright to it, where you can't publish that text without permission.
