What Will Happen To Superman, Batman And Wonder Woman When Copyrights Expire In A Decade? (image@DCOfficial)

While superheroes never dies, all copyrights do. Once the copyrights expired, the comic characters can be twisted and turned according to anyone’s whims and wishes. The expiration of DC characters are looming over, as Superman and Louis Lane will be thrusted to public domain in 2034, followed by Batman in 2035, the Joker in 2036, and Wonder Woman in 2037.

On January1, Disney lost upper hand over “Steamboat Willie”, and within 24 hours, two horror-comedies starring Mickey Mouse were declared. Chris Sims, who is a comic book author and Batman expert, expects a series of unauthorised Batman comics to pop out as soon as the copyright expires. He said, “there is going tom be 100 of them. They are going to have them ready to go”, as quoted by Variety. Movie producers will also be able to make up their own version of the characters, like the domain characters of Dracula and Robinhood.

“Those characters are going to fall into the public domain one by one”, said Amanda Schreyer, media and entertainment lawyer at Morse. Reportedly, DC has been preparing for this. During a press event in 2023, James Gunn, CEO of DC Studio, noted that the next Superman film will be introducing characters from “The Authority”, which is a comic series that was launched in 1999, in part because the Superman’s copyright will be expired soon.

Jay Kogan, deputy general counsel of DC has laid out a strategy to protect the characters that fall into the public domain in a 2001 article. He said, since only the older versions lose protection, he asked to keep the characters “fresh and up-to-date”. He said, “by gradually changing the literary and visual characteristics of a character over time, a character owner can keep whatever the then-current image of the character is as the de facto standard in the public consciousness”.

Mark Waid, a comic book author, and historian, who is best known for his work on DC Comics titles like “Superman: Birthright”. He said, “or how about Superman versus Godzilla. It’s a gray area. But this town works on the speed of capitalism, right? That’s how we work”.