When the copyright expired on January 1, 2024, to the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse, one of the most iconic characters in the world – and one on which the Walt Disney Company had built its studio, brand and fortune – no time was wasted.
The very next day, comedy-horror Screamboat was announced by writer-director Steven LaMorte, a parody (or you could say, mickey take) of that classic 1928 animated feature which introduced the world to Mickey.
In Screamboat though, there’s a lot more blood, guts and cannibalism than found in the original, with the action moved to a late-night ride on the Staten Island ferry from New York, where unsuspecting commuters are targeted by a menacing mouse on a murderous rampage.
It’s not the first horror reinterpretation of Disney, following 2023 British indie flick Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey after A.A. Milne’s original 1926 book entered the pubic domain in the US, among others.
But this time, it’s Mickey Mouse, founder Walt Disney’s own creation – or this first version of him, at least (although The Mouse Trap still manged to be first over the line here).
The key ingredient to this new 18-rated slasher would of course be the actor chosen to play Willie – and horror legend David Howard Thornton, who’d already built himself a reputation in the genre by playing Art the Clown in the Terrifier franchise – was ‘pretty much in it from the start’.
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Thornton, 45, relished the ‘wonderful’ freedom of the film as a parody – and free of any copyright – because ‘you can get away with so much’.
He’s also a huge fan of the animation house, identifying as ‘a Disney brat since basically day one’. Taking on his own version of Mickey as this steamboat’s ‘Willie’ seemed almost destined to be.
‘My first stuffed animal was Winnie the Pooh. My first film I ever saw in the theatre was The Fox and the Hound. My first voice I ever did was Goofy in first grade, and the first starting role I ever had was playing Mickey Mouse in A Mickey’s Christmas Carol in middle school – and that’s what started my love of being on stage and making people laugh,’ he tells Metro.
An avid movie-watcher and visitor to the theme parks in Orlando, Florida when growing up as well, he only has the fondest of feelings towards Disney.
‘I’ve had a lifelong love of Disney, so I was excited to do something with Disney but in a unique way. And who knows, they might hate me now, but I hope that’s not the case. I would love to actually work with the company in a professional sense.’
He confirms that there’s been no word from the Disney camp yet, so his parkgoer status remains unblemished, adding: ‘I hope that they embrace [it] and I hope they understand that what we did was actually a love letter to the company.’
It’s true that Screamboat is stuffed full of references to Disney – from the obvious, like the Disney princess-adjacent costumes a group of entitled party girls wear, to the more niche, like a nod to the Main Street Electrical Parade from the parks.
In terms of what Screamboat’s Willie looks like… it’s pretty horrifying. This Willie has matted grey fur, pointed rodent teeth and claws on the end of his be-gloved fingers. But there’s no denying who he’s meant to be, especially with the big circular ears.
‘I saw very different designs of the character, especially the face,’ Thornton reveals. ‘They were trying to go between the line of the actual cartoon version and the more realistic version of what a mutant rodent would look like, and I think they found a nice blend of the two.’
‘You’ve got to have the big ears, it’s one of the most iconic silhouettes in history,’ he points out.
But there’s also a more realistic quality to this Willie’s design (if you can say that of a knee-high, blood-thirsty cannibal mutant rodent prone to cutting off body parts), Thornton argues, in his build, even if his clothes remain the cartoonish and recognisable hat, shoes and shorts of Steamboat Willie.
‘We didn’t want him to just look like Sci-Fi Channel, horror movie camp, but we wanted it to actually have some realistic qualities to it,’ he reasons.
The actor definitely felt the pressure to serve Disney fans with enough of what they’d expect from a Mickey-esque figure, as well as to ‘stay as true to the character in his own way’, as Thornton had created his Willie to be.
For him, that meant the ‘animalistic’ sounds that ‘organically’ started coming out of him on set, which even surprised Thornton, as someone used to playing silent characters – but director LaMorte was keen to keep them in too. But there’s also plenty of (creepy) whistling, something indelibly linked with Steamboat Willie while he’s seen steering the boat at the start of the famous Disney short.
In terms of movement like Willie/Mickey, Thornton was also keen to reflect the musicality of the original character.
‘In the old shorts there was a boppiness because everything was music based, and so you usually have the characters walking around to the beat of the music that’s playing. That’s something I wanted to focus on too, is his jauntiness,’ he explains.
Thornton admits that this was sometimes inhibited by his ‘cumbersome’ costume though, one which would see him go through four to five cooling vests a day underneath.
‘Every time they took them off, there would just be water [everywhere]. They would open my costume and you would just see steam escaping from me – in July, which shows how hot it was inside that costume!’
But he was happy to deal with the issue and find a way to work around it, the same as with Willie/Mickey’s famous white gloves.
‘Because those were big, cartoonish, four-fingered gloves, that kind of changed what I could grip – but we worked on things so they were big enough for me to actually handle.’
The film relies a lot on forced perspective and separate shots to film Thornton – a human man supposed to be mouse-sized(ish) – alongside his human co-stars, which helped with this.
‘A pin that is our size would be much bigger to Willie, and so they could actually make the props bigger, so I was able to grab them and manipulate them the right ways.’
However, he also identifies this as the biggest challenge of filming, not being on set with his fellow actors and having to ‘just pretend that there’s a giant person in front of me that I’m trying to stab or something like that’.
There’s a lot in Screamboat that will shock and delight fans (Disney and horror alike), but one of Thornton’s personal favourite parts is the ending – which suggests a sequel could be in store too.
‘I just love the big climax with where you find out what’s really going on with him, why he’s doing what he’s doing. It adds an extra layer to the character. This character is not totally evil, he’s got a heart behind him. He’s just had a bad life, you know? And he needs a little therapy!’ Thornton laughs.
Although that therapy could interfere with a second film…
Screamboat is in Vue cinemas in the UK from today. It’s also in cinemas in the US now.
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