8 Ways to Adapt Public Domain IP

Wait, what is Public Domain, you ask?

International Copyright Laws are for a fixed amount of time, extended by Disney a couple of times so that they could hang onto Mickey Mouse... but now he’s public domain! When a book or movie or character or anything else under copyright hits the end of its protection, it becomes Public Domain and anyone can use it... and usually the first use is in some low-budget horror flick. In 2025 Mickey Mouse went on a killing spree in Screamboat, loosely based on Mickey’s first film Steamboat Willie. Every year there’s a new list of things entering Public Domain, that you can use in a screenplay or novel and maybe add some “name value” to your project. Hey, everyone knows who Mickey Mouse is, so your horror movie can find a larger audience.

So let’s look at how to use Public Domain works in your screenplays (or novels).

When the first story with Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple or Mickey Mouse becomes Public Domain, only that version of the character is Public Domain. My friend Timothy Miller has a series of (great) novels about Sherlock Holmes that use real characters and events or other Public Domain stories from that time period. His first novel had Holmes and Watson solving a mystery that involved both Eliza Doolittle and Mr. Hyde. His second had Holmes solving the *murder* of Vincent Van Gogh.

A few years ago there was a movie about Holmes in retirement as a beekeeper that got into some legal trouble because the last original Sherlock Holmes story where he’d retired (to become a beekeeper) hadn’t hit public domain, yet. As I write this, the image of Pluto the dog from Disney is in public domain, but the name Pluto won’t be Public Domain for two more years. So you need to use the version of the character that’s in Public Domain, not a version that’s still under copyright protection. I realize that might be a bit confusing, but I don’t think you need to be a wizard to figure it out.

Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel became Public Domain years ago, and the Broadway Musical Wicked was probably the most famous result. Once something becomes Public Domain, you have three different options other than a horror movie...

Those are the 3 main options in adapting a Public Domain work.

1) The problem with just remaking The Wizard of Oz is that everyone is going to compare it to the 1939 classic version (which is actually the 13th version of “Oz”). The very thing that makes The Wizard of Oz worth using when it becomes Public Domain works against just remaking it. The 1939 (remake) version is the one that we remember is because it was the very best version possible... and our remake probably isn’t going to be better. No matter what you do, people are going to compare it to that famous version they have loved since they were kids.

2) Using Dorothy (or one of the other characters) in a new adventure is also possible. We might wonder what happened to her when she woke up back in Kansas - where did life take her from there? How did the lessons she learned in Oz impact her life? That actually sounds interesting to me. What if the Adult Dorothy became Rosie the Riveter? One of the women pilots in World War II? Think of all of the possible futures for Dorothy (or even The Scarecrow) and pick the best of those ideas for your story.

3) But I think the “re-imagining” method is probably the best choice, and we have movies like The Wiz (1978) and Wicked as great examples. Both began life as Broadway musicals, and became popular films. There’s enough of the popular story in those films, but with interesting changes that made them fresh and original. Since Wicked and Wicked: For Good are the latest versions (and sold a bunch of cinema tickets after being a hit Broadway musical), let’s use those as examples of how you can adapt a Public Domain work into something original that is also nostalgic...

Screenplay by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, based on the Broadway musical by Holzman & Stephen Schwartz, which was based on the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, a re-imagining of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel. Copyright lasts 95 years.

Using that third option, these films are “origin stories” focusing on the two Witches from the 1939 movie... before that tornado landed Dorothy in Oz. The great thing about an Origin Story of a PD work is that it guarantees you won’t hit any unexpected copyright bumps, because your story happens before the story with the expired copyright.

When I first saw Wicked (2024), the first 20 minutes didn’t work for me. It had show tunes and dancing, but not much emotion. One of the problems was: it began with the most familiar character from the famous 1939 film - Good Witch Glinda (Ariana Grande) - but makes her a vacuous beauty... and then flashes back to the story. By the time we get to Magic School in the Emerald City and our protagonist Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) helps Goat Professor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage), the whole thing began to work for me.

That scene where two social outcasts (Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond) connect is the first big emotional scene in the film. From there on, we get a bunch of great scenes and characters- from Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) in her wheelchair, to the Handsome Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) who is pretending to dance through life, to Munchkin Boq Woodsman (Ethan Slater) who really finds love. I understand wanting to begin on “familiar ground” and then show us the new characters (and a new side of the Wicked Witch of the West), so those first 20 minutes make sense in retrospect. Plus, a Broadway Musical needs a big opening musical number. Part of a “re-imagining” is beginning with the familiar and luring the audience to the new version of this world... but emotions are key to any screenplay or novel.

It’s always about writing to create those emotions in the audience or reader. To make them feel what the characters are feeling, even if the protagonist is a green girl who will become the Wicked Witch of the West - the most feared and hated character from that 1939 film version of the story that we all love.

I guess it worked, because Wicked (Part One) made $759 million and is the highest-grossing musical film of all time... and Wicked: For Good has made $520 million as I write this, and is still in the Top Ten Box Office after 7 weeks (and Avatar 3). Big hits and a great example of how to adapt a work in Public Domain into something original that connects with the audience. We are invested in these characters from the first film, and want to find out how it ends... even though we have all seen the 1939 Wizard of Oz.

The two Witches from the 1939 film who are mortal enemies... are best friends in these films. The Wicked Witch of the West’s sister who gets crushed by the house? A huge surprise in For Good because it’s cute wheelchair bound Nessarose. The magical Ruby Slippers were created by Elphaba to give her the ability to walk... as kind of a bribe. Everything that we thought we knew from the 1939 version gets a backstory that turns it into a shocking twist. Instead of just coming up with some origin story for the Ruby Slippers, the writers came up with the one with the most emotional impact. The Wicked Witch of the East was a non-character in the 1939 version - she’s dead as soon as Dorothy’s house fell on her. By making her a sweet, sympathetic character in this film, that death by falling farmhouse has a major impact!

That’s what we want to aim for in our re-imagining - taking something from the original... and turning it into something that makes us gasp. Every story has scenes and moments that are exposition, just setting up what will happen later. Those are great scenes to re-imagine because the audience takes them for granted. We don’t think of them as “twist material” because they seem to exist only to set up the original story.

Though The Wizard of Oz is all about a Wizard and some Witches, the idea of a magic school where people born with gifts can learn how to use them creates an original “High School experience” that we can all relate to. Plus works as its own “exposition machine” to explain both the world of magic, the history of Oz, the conflict between humans and talking animals, and back-stories on all of our characters... Plus that great love triangle between Glinda, Prince Fiyero, and Elphaba. The beauty queen, the handsome jock, and the “physically unattractive” but super intelligent girl. That romantic triangle is an important part of the story and creates conflict between the two women. Think about how your re-imagining can use a familiar but different genre to take what we thought we knew about these characters and change it into something different but relatable.

But you want to know about those last 5 ways to adapt a Public Domain work into something original, right?

1) Change The Point Of View. The Wizard of Oz was Dorothy’s point of view, her story as a farm girl whisked away by a tornado and dropped into this magical world. Wicked takes the point of view of the villain in that story, and in For Good the events from the 1939 film are shown from a completely different angle and context.

Since The Maltese Falcon just became public domain (2025), instead of telling the story from Sam Spade’s point of view, how about from Kasper Gutman’s? He’s the villain of the novel - the Fat Man who is looking for the valuable Maltese Falcon statuette that’s gold encrusted with jewels... but painted black to look worthless.

Or Joel Cairo, one of the other villains. Like Gutman, he’s been searching for the Black Bird for years... and might have had a lot of adventures before this.

Or Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the femme fatale of the story who is also after the Falcon, but uses seduction as her weapon... who also has past adventures that we don’t know bout... yet!

Or Wilmer, Gutman’s “gunsel” - a hired gun who is also Gutman’s boy toy. There’s a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern type story you can tell with any Public Domain work about the memorable minor characters who make a big impact on that story. He’s a pawn in this story, but as a Gay hired gun in 1930s San Francisco? I’m sure he’s had some interesting adventures in the past.

Or even Floyd Thursby, who was Brigid’s last boy toy and is dead a couple of chapters into the novel. The problem is that he’s not a very memorable character, because he’s already dead when we meet him.

Or Miles Archer, Sam Spade’s partner in the Private Detective business. His wife is sleeping with Sam Spade, but does he know that? Real-life private detective turned mystery novelist Joe Gores wrote a (licensed) novel Spade & Archer which takes place before The Maltese Falcon. But now you don’t need to pay the rights owner before you write... because it’s Public Domain.

2) Back Stories & Origins. One of the great things in Wicked: For Good are the origins of the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow. These characters were just Dorothy’s sidekicks in Wizard of Oz, but shocking twists in Wicked.

Take a Public Domain property and look for the clues to their back stories and write about teenage Miss Marple solving her first mystery... or Pluto as a puppy!

3) Different (or more fleshed out) Motivations. The Wizard in Wicked isn’t that nice Carnival Magician from the 1939 version, he’s a fraud... and will do anything to hide that. So he does a bunch of terrible things. He’s the evil villain of the story!

Whether you focus on the motivations for a character, or change them, this creates a different story dynamic and makes what’s old, new again. What if you explored that old joke that Miss Marple was a serial killer who “solved crimes” to throw the blame on someone else? What if Watson was the brains and Sherlock Holmes was just his “puppet”? That’s Without a Clue (1988). Look at any PD character and find a different motivation for their actions... and see if that creates an interesting story.

4) Different History. Wicked did a great job of altering the history of the 1939 movie and making it something we hadn’t seen before. Similar to changing the motivations of the characters, this changes the physical history to make something new. A great example are the Flying Monkeys - frightening creatures in the 1939 film, but when we understand how they came to be in Wicked they become tragic and sympathetic.

“History is written by the victors,” according to Winston Churchill, so what if we looked at history from a different point of view? From a different perspective? A very different history led us to this place? Take any story in the Public Domain and look for an alternative history for the story or the characters.

5) Additional Characters. That talking goat professor Dr. Dillamond and Madame Morrible (who is horrible) are new characters who completely change the story. Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is the ultimate villain of Wicked, pulling the strings of the Wizard from behind the scenes. That tornado that gets Dorothy to Oz and kills the Wicked Witch of the East? Morrible’s magic spell designed to distract the people of Oz from her schemes.

You can insert a character (or characters) of your own creation into a Public Domain story and completely change who the protagonist or antagonist is. Change a pivotal character in the original into a new character that you create. We don’t know what happened to the real Maltese Falcon, we only know that the statuette delivered by Captain Jacoby was a fake... What if someone switched them before delivery? What if a character you created was the real mastermind behind all of this, and set the characters up to kill each other so they could escape with the real Maltese Falcon?

Imagine the possibilities!

Those are 8 ways to take a story that becomes Public Domain and turn it into something fresh and exciting... yet familiar. Wicked shows us what is possible using these techniques. Did you ever think that was the Scarecrow’s backstory?

As I was writing this tip 5 days after Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon became Public Domain, prolific mystery writer Max Allan Collins’ Return Of The Maltese Falcon came out in hardback... and there’s another lesson in Public Domain. We know in advance when a book or play or movie reaches the end of its copyright. You can have your screenplay or novel finished and rewritten and ready for market the day the IP becomes PD.