Next 12 months, the Walt Disney Company will flip 100 years outdated. Ahead of that large milestone, Disney’s launched a brand new animated brief highlighting one of many oldest and long-forgotten creations: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Released earlier within the week, the brief is fittingly in black-and-white and options conventional animation. That the brief is concerning the character returning to movie was an intentional alternative, stated director Eric Goldberg in an announcement. “We wanted to bring Oswald back, and in the short, he literally returns to his original home, the movie screen,” he stated. “We wanted to have Oswald do all of the ‘squash-and-stretch,’ ‘rubber hose’-animation style, celebrating that first generation of Walt Disney’s artists.”

Oswald was created in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, and first debuted within the “Trolley Troubles” brief that very same 12 months. His whole filmography of almost 30 shorts runs from 1927-1938, although most of these are from Universal, who acquired the rights from Disney in 1928. After Oswald was offered off, Disney and Iwerks went on to create Mickey Mouse, and the remainder is historical past. As his time in shorts was winding down, Universal stored Oswald alive with a sequence of comics from the ‘30s to the late ‘60s, and gave him his own supporting cast, including surrogate sons. As his star power was fading, Universal eventually replaced him with Walter Lantz and Ben Hardaway’s Woody Woodpecker.

In 2006, Oswald was again to Disney by Universal in change for sportscaster Al Michaels leaping from ESPN to NBC Sports (significantly), although nothing large actually got here of this for a number of years. He was deliberate to star in his personal sequence on Disney+, which might’ve been a observe as much as the 2018 revival of The Three Caballeros, however that was later canned. The most substantial look he had was within the short-lived Epic Mickey online game sequence from Junction Point Studios, which was the primary time he and Mickey appeared collectively in any capability. In the sequel, it was even potential to play as Oswald if a second participant was available.

Given how Disney likes to flex its IP-hoarding physique at each alternative, possibly we’ll be seeing extra of Oswald within the close to future? It’d be a little bit unusual to launch a brief for the character 10 months earlier than Disney’s celebrating the century milestone in any other case.

[by way of Polygon]

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