Ever wonder when this century will throw off the dead hand of the previous one and finally assert itself culturally? Don’t hold your breath.

As an army of stylists slavishly copy 1990s fashions for their K-Pop clients and retailers line up to feed the trend, I can be forgiven for asking. Or as Netflix executives mine 1980s nostalgia for the successor to smash hit Stranger Things and the next mediocre Agatha Christie adaptation grinds through the gears. Or as the surviving members of The Beatles dust off another home demo found down the back of the sofa and peddlers of vinyl records pitch their wares with: ‘Roll up, roll up! Listen to 2023 chart-toppers The Fab Four the same way your grandparents did!’

For years the cinemas have been choked with superhero movies. But has there been one whose lead character wasn’t created in the 1970s or earlier? Baby Boomers or Gen X-ers to a man, woman and mutant. They should retire.

Now an unholy combination of American copyright laws and advances in AI has thrown two of the last century’s cultural heavyweights into the present day, just where we didn’t need them. They are Mickey Mouse and Elvis Presley, respectively a helium-voiced cartoon rodent and a man who sang and shook his hips on television when it was still black and white.

To be fair, Elvis is always on our minds, to borrow the title of one of his last great songs. Our wallets feel him constantly too. Australian film director Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic raked in around £230 million in box office takings, and another Presley family-related treat arrived in UK cinemas this week in the form of Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s adaptation of Mrs P’s 1985 memoir, Elvis And Me.

Meanwhile the singer’s song 1961 hit Can’t Help Falling In Love has over 800 million plays on Spotify. Even accounting for the uber-fans, that means about 10% of the world’s population has heard it there.

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Now comes the news that Elvis is be given the ABBA treatment. By which I mean he will return to the stage as an avatar in a technology-driven extravaganza utilising holographic projections. The entertainment company behind the project, UK-based Layered Reality, is calling it “a major new show celebrating the world’s biggest star of stage and screen.”

Elvis Evolution will launch at an as-yet-unspecified venue in London in November, just in time for what would have been the King’s 90th birthday in January 2025. It will then tour to Berlin, Tokyo and – how could it not? – Las Vegas, which Elvis hymned in song and where he undertook a seven year residency following his 1968 comeback.

The Herald: ABBA VoyageABBA Voyage (Image: free)

Featuring a life-size digital Elvis and blending “augmented reality, theatre, projection and multi-sensory effects”, it will “recreate the seismic impact of seeing Elvis live for a whole new generation of fans, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.”

The King is dead – long live the King as an AI-generated holographic entity.

They used to say rockers like him were coming for your daughters, now it’s your dollars. The ABBA Voyage show takes around £1.6 million a week in ticket sales and the company behind it, Pophouse Entertainment Group, has recently gone into partnership with 1970s rockers Kiss. It means they can rub off the face-paint, put their slippers on but continue to tour as avatars. Ker-ching.

Who’s next? Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. to join Ol’ Blue Eyes on stage for a run through the back catalogue? How long before Prince is on the road again? And what do you feel about seeing Michael Jackson do Thriller on stage?

The first day of the year also pitched Mickey Mouse into the public consciousness in an unusual way. That’s when US copyright lapsed on his first cinema outing, 1928 short film Steamboat Willie. Cue the release of a trailer for a slasher film in which the killer wears a Mickey mask, a stunt which would have resulted in legal action previously. “In order to flip the coin, you have to come up with something that’s the polar opposite of what already exists,” says producer Simon Phillips.

A Mickey-themed computer game, produced by Nightmare Forge Games and titled Infestation 88, has also been released. That trickle may soon become a torrent as writers, directors, games developers and more hop on the Mickey Mouse bandwagon. Within a decade copyright will also have lapsed on Donald Duck, Pluto, Batman, Superman and James Bond. Expect lots and lots of what doesn’t already exist – but does, really, because these are characters with which we are achingly familiar.

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Capital loves a sure thing. So when there it becomes clear there is cash to be made from re-purposing the cultural heritage of the past, and when laws and technologies ease the way, the money goes there rather than into riskier ventures – the sort which could still generate huge popular appeal but do it using the cultural currency of the moment.

That’s not to say we should reject the past – just that we should try facing in the opposite direction for a while. Make, don’t remix, should be the mantra.