Is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) public domain?
The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.
Public domain in the United States
What is usually said
Public domain, never renewed.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: registered L3249 in 1932, with no renewal in the 1959 or 1960 volumes.
The original application card is scanned: registration L 3249, received 17 September 1932, seven reels, entered as "The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell", claimant RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Renewal fell due in 1959 and 1960 and appears in neither volume. In the 1959 renewal sequence the M entries run from Miracle Man to Movie Mad, skipping straight over where this title belongs. In the 1960 volume the phrase "dangerous game" occurs exactly twice, and both are M-Squad television episodes.
One renewal has ever been registered under this title, and it is not this film. RE0000705075, from 1995, renews LP0000035031 of 1967: a Lassie episode belonging to the Wrather Corporation. It is the kind of near miss a title search returns and a number check disposes of.
The story underneath is clear too. Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game was published in Collier’s in 1924 and has been public domain in the United States since 2020 on the ninety-five-year term, whatever happened to its renewal.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- L3249, received 17 September 1932, seven reels
- Claimant
- RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
- Renewal fell due
- 1959–1960
- Renewal found
- none
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
How to check this yourself
Everything above is drawn from public records. None of it requires our word:
- The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Office’s printed registration and renewal volumes, scanned and searchable at the Internet Archive and at the Online Books Page. Registration numbers beginning LP or MP are film entries.
- The Copyright Office online records at copyright.gov, which are complete from 1978 and therefore decisive for any renewal that fell due from then on.
- The NFPF Field Guide to Sponsored Films, for the industrial and educational titles, which records copyright status entry by entry.
Where these numbers came from
- Copyright Office digitized card catalog, the 1932 application card for L3249.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1959 (archive.org catalogofcopyrig3131213li).
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1960 (archive.org catalogofcopyr3141213libr).
- Copyright Office public catalog, renewal RE0000705075, which is a different film.
What this does and does not mean
This is a finding about United States copyright, made in good faith from the public record. Copyright terms differ by country, and a film in the public domain here may still be protected elsewhere.
A negative search proves that no record was found, which is not identical to proving that no record exists. The Copyright Office says as much about its own catalogs. Where a search could not be decisive we say so above rather than rounding it up to certainty.
This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in this film, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to mike@tapeterritory.com with what we missed and we will correct it here.
Why we did this research
Establishing what may be published is the first step before restoring a film and writing an audio description for it. That is what this site is for, and we do the same work on commission — audio description and captioning, with published rates.