A horror comedy film that features Mickey Mouse as the villain has released its trailer on the same day that Disney’s 1928 classic Steamboat Willie became public domain.
The film, titled Mickey’s Mouse Trap, has the following synopsis- “It’s Alex’s 21st birthday, but she’s stuck at the amusement arcade on a late shift so her friends decide to surprise her, but a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse decides to play a game of his own with them which she must survive.”
The trailer shows a person in a Mickey Mouse suit, sporting a hockey jersey without any letters, terrorizing and killing people in a place that looks like Chuck E. Cheese (similar to the popular horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s from last year).
The trailer also has some meta-humour about the horror tropes, such as one character saying that another one is doomed because he said, “I’ll be right back.”
{{/usCountry}}The trailer also has some meta-humour about the horror tropes, such as one character saying that another one is doomed because he said, “I’ll be right back.”
{{/usCountry}}“Well, he’s dead. … If he was in a horror movie, you’d never say, ‘I’ll be right back,’ because then you … don’t,” he says.
The reveal trailer also displays the words- “A place for fun, a place for friends, a place for hunting. The mouse is out.”
The film's director, Jamie Bailey, said in a statement, “We just wanted to have fun with it all. I mean it’s Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse murdering people. It’s ridiculous. We ran with it and had fun doing it and I think it shows.”
The cast of the film includes Sophie McIntosh, Callum Sywyk, Allegra Nocita, Ben Harris, Damir Kovic, Mackenzie Mills, Nick Biskupek and Simon Phillips. The producers are Paul Whitney, Mark Popejoy, Alexander Gausman and Andrew Agopsowicz, with Filmcore’s Mem Ferda as co-producer.
The film is expected to come out in March, but the exact release date and the distribution platform are not yet confirmed.
First Pooh, now Mickey
Mickey’s Mouse Trap is not the first film to use a public-domain character as a horror antagonist. Last year, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was released, based on A.A. Milne’s original Winnie the Pooh, which became public domain two years ago. This year, another Pooh character, Tigger, also joins the public domain.