To get around paying royalties by tickets are free but programmes are £5

[Iwanttovoteukip]

Our village produced a panto of Cinderella last December. It raised money for a local charity. This year we want to do another panto with local children etc but to do Frozen. I have a feeling Disney would not allow it and expect royalties. However, I've heard you can get round this by making e nary and tickets free but ask people to buy a programme for £5. I'm no legal expert, is this unreasonable. It is for charity.

Oops, I see this was first. But srsly, you're wanting to use their intellectual property precisely to trade on the goodwill in it. Which is precisely what the law forbids.

As others have pointed out, it's stealing. Don't do it.

Disney don't own Cinderella. It is an old fairytale, ancient kn fact, was written down by the brothers Grimm over 200 years ago.

Same with Snowwhite, old folk fairytale, not owned by Disney.

Disney did not create all their characters, they borrowed a lot! ( Frozen is based on the Ice Queen I think, another fab fairytale, Pinocchio was not invented by Disney either)

The problem is that if you do that, firstly if we were going with our family of 5, the most we ever buy on the programme front is one. AT that price we'd do without.
Secondly, if you say everyone has to buy a programme then it is effectively tickets, and I don't think anyone would see it as anything but.

My dc do a local amateur pantomime every year. They sell out 6 performances every year, they don't need to piggy back someone else's success to succeed. It's a case of both being good and producing a good show and careful marketing.

Disney threatened our local hospital pharmacy with legal action when they used shop-bought stickers of Winnie the Pooh on their out of hours prescriptions (Pharmacy Out Of Hours, geddit?).

So would they do the same to a charity pantomime that was actively nicking their property? Yes.

If you used the Disney songs in the Cinderella panto too then you could be sued for that too if they got wind of it, as they would if you wrote to them.

Chances of them finding out are fairly slim tbh, but not worth the risk. There are plenty of shows out there that you can perform without resorting to this.

Not the point at all BravePotato - 'Frozen' has some elements of 'The Snow Queen' but OP presumably wants Elsa and Anna, not Gerda and Kai. She also presumably wants them to sing 'Let It Go' not something she or someone else involved in it has written from scratch.

She can do 'The Snow Queen', no copyright issues from original story, but that isn't what she wants. She wants to exploit someone else's work and hide it under the banner of 'charity.'

I can't believe you've two threads running on the same subject... May I break it down for you? It's not ok to steal.

Stop flogging a terrible idea, stick an ad in your local paper and find a writer who will work with you to create a truly original work based on the Snow Queen. It will be better and more popular and you will also be able to sell tickets. And sleep easy in your bed that Disney won't shut you down the day before yoi're due to open.

YABU. Doing frozen is a bad idea. I would do a traditional pantomime and not risk the legal repercussions.

You would be thinking 'How the hell would Disney even know we were doing it, and would they really waste their time pursuing us?? It's for CHARITY'.

Believe me, with any other company you could probably get away with it, but with Disney, they have a whole team of people who are looking out for exactly this sort of thing. It may seem petty and a waste of time to you, but that's exactly how they protect their brand. They will come after the smallest, least public infringement of their copyright.

(FWIW, I agree with them. And not only because I might or might not be a previous employee)

Disney have about the same level of charitable impulse and sense of humour as US Customs and Immigration.

Don't. Just don't.

Absolutely not. 100% illegal. It makes no difference if you charge entry or not, or if it is for charity or not. You also have to be careful with Disney songs. Write your own panto if you want but DON'T copy someone else's work

We are doing Rapunzel this Christmas. It will NOT be Tangled.

Don't mess with the mouse.

There are so many pantomimes and plays out there that are totally legal (and good) that I wonder why it is people insist on breaking the law? If you think the only way people will come to watch is by doing something so well known then maybe you need to re think your marketing/performances.

They can object, and they probably will. You'll get a cease and desist letter with a warning of punitive damages or royalties.

They won't care if it is a charity event, whether you're a little village production, whether you're all amateur participants. Their legal department will be the only people you'll hear from, and the only people who'll hear from you, and they'll do their job.

Choose something else, seriously.

Why not get in touch with the PRS? You may be able to get a licence to perform copyrighted music so you could use some of the songs at least. I'm no expert but they are, so it's got to be worth a call to them.

I work for a company like Disney. We get a lot of requests like this. The answer will be no - that's assuming you can track down the right person to ask in the first place and they are willing to go and ask everyone involved for approval. It's not just a question of Disney being corporate Goliaths - they will have existing official charity partnerships they need to protect and also, as Squeezy and Wilson point out, they have writers, musicians, designers, artists, animators etc who have slogged long and hard over many years to create this piece of work - why do you think it's ok to steal their work and use some imagined loophole to get around it?

Why not use one of the many pantos available to license for these purposes - that way the writers get some money for what they do. For a (meagre and unstable) living.

Or why not create your own show which has relevance to the village and the charity?

I'd also like to commend MaidofStars for her response (applauds)