Oswalds Collide As Jon Favreau’s 'Oswald The Lucky Rabbit' Series Casts Three

Young stars of 'Skeleton Crew' and 'The Penguin' are hopping on over

Oswald is meeting Oswald, the Skeleton Crew is splintering further, and there is no Alice in the Palace. Jon Favreau, director of the 2016 Jungle Book remake and the 2019 Lion King remake with only animated elements to speak of, is making a live-action/animated hybrid Disney+ series for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as writer, director and producer, in the biggest production starring the character in decades, at least where he doesn’t share the spotlight. Three leads have been cast, and in Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Mykal-Michelle Harris, and Ryder Allen, they might be the highest-profile bunch of kids a series has had in a while.

A plot synopsis hasn’t been released, but Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is typically a saucy, self-absorbed bunny, and considering how infrequently he is used in a characterizable manner, they’re probably going to stick to it. As for his co-stars they’re a trio of middle schoolers. Cabot-Conyers will play hardworking Jake, who has a big heart. Harris is the artistic Jen, who is always ahead of the game. Allen is the cautious Taylor, who despite their trepidations in most aspects, avoids turning down his friends.

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You might not know the actors’ names, but you know their roles. Cabot-Conyers starred as Wim in the Disney+ Star Wars series Skeleton Crew, which as a shepherd of Star Wars’s current era Favreau executive produced, and voiced Antonio Madrigal in Disney’s hit Encanto. Harris is best known for playing Raven’s niece Alice Baxter on the latter two seasons of Disney Channel’s Raven’s Home, bringing a youthful flair as Isaac Ryan Brown as Booker was in the latter part of high school by then. She even played young Raven in the 100th episode. There were reports, around the time Raven’s Home was confirmed over, of a spinoff with the character called Alice in the Palace. However, with this news it just doesn’t seem likely to have developed far enough to retain her. Her other credits include Big Little Lies, The Affair, and playing Santamonica Johnson on Mixed-ish. Allen played young Oswald Cobblepot, in flashbacks to Colin Farrell’s present-day version, on The Penguin. He also starred as Sam in the Apple film Palmer, which had Justin Timberlake in the lead role.

Oswald was Disney’s first animated star, the predecessor to Mickey Mouse. He starred in 27 theatrical animated shorts produced by them between 1927 and 1928, before Walt refused to settle for a 20% share, lost the rights, and went on to create Mickey and his eventual friends. After nearly 80 years, with only the first 10 in active production, Disney reacquired the rights to Oswald from NBCUniversal in 2006. In exchange, Al Michaels was allowed to move to NBC’s Sunday Night Football, as in the following season, Monday Night Football was moving from ABC to ESPN with a new broadcast team. Michaels spent 15 seasons at NBC before moving over to Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football telecasts starting with the 2022 season. Aside from a prominent co-starting role in the Epic Mickey video games, merchandise and parks presence, Oswald in film and TV was relegated to cameos in shorts like Get A Horse! or the Mickey Mouse series run by Paul Rudish. There was an Oswald animated series developed for Disney+ and showrun by Matt Danner of the Muppet Babies reboot and The Legend of the Three Caballeros but was canceled seemingly before the streamer even launched. In December 2022, the company released the first Oswald short since losing him, and is the most recent project to star him until this series.

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Source: Deadline