Entering the US public domain on January 1, 2027
Counting down… until the Class of 1931 is free.
The headliners of 1931
Dracula (Tod Browning; Bela Lugosi's vampire — though Universal's trademark posture around the character will matter, as with Mickey in 2024). Frankenstein (James Whale; Karloff's monster — note the iconic flat-head makeup design raises its own questions). City Lights (Chaplin). M (Fritz Lang's serial-killer masterpiece — German, but expiry beats restoration, as our Metropolis dossier explains). The Public Enemy (Cagney). Plus every other film, book, song composition, and artwork first published in 1931.
The release-date trap: two "1931" films that are already free
Little Caesar (released 9 January 1931) and Cimarron (the Best Picture winner, released early 1931) were both registered for copyright in December 1930. The term runs from that 1930 date, not from the premiere, so both films entered the US public domain a year early, on 1 January 2026. Always check the copyright date on the record, not the release year on a poster. (Thanks to a reader on r/publicdomain for the catch.)
What "entering the public domain" actually means
The 1931 film prints become free to copy, share, adapt, and monetize in the US. As always, layers matter: later remakes and restorations stay protected, franchise trademarks (Universal's monsters!) survive expiry, and modern score recordings on the copies you download carry their own rights. Our dossiers will map each layer with evidence, the day it happens.
For journalists and researchers
The machine-readable dataset of the 1931 film class is ready now, ahead of Public Domain Day — 33 films with the date each one becomes free, the layer flags that catch people out (franchise trademarks that survive expiry, URAA on foreign works, modern score recordings), and the dossier URL each will live at:
class-1931.json · class-1931.csv — CC0, no attribution required (a link back is appreciated). Questions or corrections: see the About page.