Disney was founded on Mickey Mouse. Yes, they made major motion pictures out of old myths and legends, like Cinderella and Robin Hood, but those stories have always been public domain and you can write a book or movie about them with no problem.
Those stories were retelling of stories which were retelling of stories which were... Disney made it law that no one is allowed to retell their stories but them. Approaching or alluding to their retelling can carry stiff penalties. It's antithetical to a universal human institution that has existed since before recorded history.
For example, if I search "Beowulf" in Amazon, the first link is for 2007 movie, the second for the book, and the third for a TV show. If I search for "The Little Mermaid", the whole page is dominated by the Disney franchise or some off-brand adaptations. Hans Christian Andersen's book is nowhere to be seen.
They will probably dig up these stories from Sumeria (tablets in UK) or other yet un-studied texts some day and rehash them completely anew...starting the cycle again.
Heck, the bible has a lot of good stuff if you can shed the religious/Christian connotations.
Yes, a Snow Crash reference! Chapter 28:
"'Rife Bible College, which he founded , has the richest archaeology department in the world. They have been conducting a dig in Eridu, which was the cult center of a Sumerian god named Enki.'"
[...]
"'Sumer was a civilization of clay. They made their buildings of it and wrote on it, too. . . . So all the data of the Sumerians have survived. Egypt left a legacy of art and architecture; Sumer's legacy is its megabytes.'"
[...]
"'If there was some phenomenon that moved through the population, altering their minds in such a way that they couldn't process the Sumerian language anymore. Kind of in the same way that a virus moves from one computer to another, damaging each computer in the same way. Coiling around the brainstem.'"
Agreed that by now it should be okay to make your own Mickey Mouse cartoon or merchandise and sell it without permission from Disney.
And I think the grandparent's point is that Mickey Mouse today is in some sense analogous to your Cinderellas and Robin Hoods in the 30s... only you can't make your own movie about him.
Their first feature film was very profitable, but it was from about 15 years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarf...).
However, their next two movies (Pinocchio, Fantasia) cost them money because they were released during World War Two, when they couldn’t show them in large parts of the world.
They needed Dumbo to make up for that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbo#Box_office), then Bambi wasn’t a huge success, either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi#Box_office)
So, I guess it wasn’t till after World War Two that their feature films became profitable. They survived, so chances are the shorts brought in money.
According to Wikipedia [0], "The U.S. and Canadian governments commissioned the studio to produce training and propaganda films. By 1942, 90 percent of its 550 employees were working on war-related films." So, it seems they primarily survived by taking government contracts, not producing shorts. In fact, the next paragraph goes on to say, "With limited staff and little operating capital during and after the war, Disney's feature films during much of the 1940s were 'package films', or collections of shorts, [...] which performed poorly at the box office." So I wouldn't say their shorts were particular moneymakers during that time. After the war, they started releasing feature films again (Song of the South, etc).
Although it does seem that in the 20s and early 30s, prior to Snow White, animated shorts and comics (and potentially related merchandising?) were most of the company's revenue.
So, I think it's probably fair to say shorts financed the company through the release of Snow White, but not really any further.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company#1934%E...
At the time, Alice in Wonderland would have still been copyrighted if it were under the copyright regime Disney etc. instituted since. The corporation pulled the ladder up after it.
Incidentally, Mickey Mouse was in many ways a ripoff of Universal's Oswald the Rabbit.
Considering that Walt Disney created Oswald the Rabbit for Universal, it is no surprise that some elements carried over to Mickey. When Universal took Oswald away from Disney's control, he responded by creating the mouse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_the_Lucky_Rabbit#Univer...
"Disney asked Iwerks to design a character that became Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The first cartoon Oswald starred in was animated entirely by Iwerks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks
Sounds a bit like a Jobs + Wozniak situation!
Oswald the Rabbit was also created by Walt Disney, in 1927, and sold to Universal. He then created Mickey Mouse as a replacement character for his own movie.
These weren't really retellings of the original stories, but it would nevertheless not be hard to imagine they would count as a derivative work under modern law and would thus have been illegal to produce without a licensing deal.