Tintin Forums

If they made a movie adaptation of Tintin in America in 2028 (it finished serialisation in 1932) it could only be shown in the US and other countries that have the same laws.

In some countries, the copyright term for works owned by a person is life + 50 years, and all of Hergé's works will become public domain on 1st January 2034. That is a slightly more realistic date for a Tintin movie based on the public domain to be released. In the US, they would have access to all of the stories up to The Black Island on that date too.

In Europe, the term is life + 70 years. All of Hergé's works will become public domain on 1st January 2054. In the US, any potential film makers would have access on that date to all of Hergé's works except for Tintin in Tibet, The Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714 to Sydney, Tintin and the Picaros and Tintin and Alph-art.
This is probably the earliest point that a public domain Tintin adaptation could be made and hope to be profitable.

Well here's the first test case for works entering the public domain - a new movie based on A.A. Milne's characters: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.

There's also an article in Variety with the film-makers, adressing the copyright issues they faced, and the steps they took to avoid conflict.

Moderator Note: Given that this is a thread about copyright, we've edited your post to identify, and add a link to, the source of the quote you had given, which didn't appear in the Wikipedia article you linked to - so rather than have it here, people can go to the Variety piece and read it there.
Also there are copyright versus public domain cases going back for years and years - this is just the most recent of many.
The Tidy Tintinologist Team

So there we have it - Mickey and Minnie start their slide into the public domain (in America at least, I haven't looked at how universal the change is in other jurisdictions, etc.) - no rear-guard action to change the law, or gain a further extension, as was being predicted by some earlier in the thread.
Already the horror-film/ slasher movie brigade are queueing up to release their takes on the mouse, as they did for Pooh Bear (who is joined this year by Tigger, now also just out of copyright).

So now we can look forward to a comic or film in which Tintin goes around Marlinspike killing everyone, and maybe even uses Calculus' ultra-sound machine in order to blow up Brussels?

I never understood why copyrights had to end. The examples above make a case for them to be everlasting.

JM Barrie gifted the rights of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital which benefited from the innumerable productions. When it first expired in the UK at the end of 1987, an act of Parliament extended it.

I think that, even if the copyright expires, the holders should have some say in blocking exploitative depictions of popular characters in ways that go totally against what the original author described, and Herge certainly would not have the selfless crimefighter Tintin become a psychotic serial killer.

Well, yes - except that that will be quite a way in the future, if the US model is followed: Calculus, Marlinspike and the events depicted in The Calculus Affair won't enter the public domain for several years, a good while after Tintin himself does so.
However, you could get to work on your action flick, for release in America in 2026, in which an Arnold Schwarzenneger/ Bruce Willis-type Tintin and his attack dog Snowy take on the forces of revolutionary Soviet Russia, zombie infested haunted houses and rabid bears (before returning to a warm welcome by the children of Brussels)... :-)

As I said earlier in the thread, I have some sympathy with that position - I get that there is some merit in having works of cultural significance available to all (which appears to be the main argument for copyrights ending), but likewise, I also can't see why intangible property like literature and music don't get the same treatment as land and houses, which can be used to generate revenue in perpetuity (or indeed why land and property don't enter the public domain after a defined period, and get used for the greater good of all).