Hey Gang, Need a Little Input ....

[alohadave]

OTOH, Kubrick's first movie fell into the public domain because he failed to renew the copyright (back when that was part of the process). He was embarrassed by it and tried to destroy prints, but some survived and when a movie house screened it in the 1990s, all he could do was issue a statement discouraging people from seeing it. Since then it's been released on DVD and presumably his estate wouldn't be seeing a cent for those sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Desire

The zombie movie genre exists solely from a mistake on the final print of Night of the Living Dead. The copyright notice was left off by mistake and it immediately became public domain.