As you know, earlier this year Mickey Mouse, or the earliest version of him, became public domain, which led to a rash of “look what we can get away with now” horror features using his image. It is also well documented that Mickey was Walt Disney’s SECOND successful creation, something he was forced to come up with after losing the rights to his breakthrough character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald is older than Mickey, which means he’s been public domain already for some time.
So why weren’t there a bunch of movies about Oswald doing horrible things years ago? Probably because the whole notion of perverting newly-freed cartoons wasn’t popularized until the Mouse was available. Now that it is, seems it’s finally Oswald’s turn.
It’s just been announced that actor Ernie Hudson is headlining the cast of Oswald: Down the Rabbit Hole, a horror pic about what happens when drawings get too real. Hudson plays Oswald Jebidiah Coleman, the creator of the rabbit, who has mysteriously disappeared. His grandson, Art Coleman (played by Topher Hall) visits his abandoned house to investigate…and is sucked into a magical television where he enters the world of old-timey Hollywood animation, a place far less friendly than it looked from the other side.
“The group finds that they are not alone when they discover Oswald’s come-to-life cartoon Rabbit, a dark entity that decides their souls are it’s for the taking,” reads the official synopsis. “Art and his friends must work together to escape their magical prison before the Rabbit gets to them first.”
You might notice in this case, Walt Disney didn’t create the rabbit, nor is it specifically referred to as Oswald (that is conveniently the animator’s name). This seems like a safeguard in case the Lucky Rabbit isn’t as QUITE as public domain as the producers thought. The design of the thing, though, is basically the same only with fangs and drool.
Hudson can currently be seen reprising his most famous role, Winston Zeddmore, in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. At what point we’ll be seeing him running from a toothy 1920s bunny is unknown — it hasn’t yet been filmed.
