Walt Disney and his crew worked on 26 different Oswald the Lucky Rabbit animated short films. While Walt Disney made the cartoons, he didn’t own them. The company who owned them was Universal. So when in 1928 Universal removed Walt’s creative rights to the animated rabbit there was nothing he could do.
Also in 1928 Disney released the animated short Steamboat Willie that had the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. That caused Disney to not need Oswald anymore.
In 2006, Disney was doing great and had no signs of slowing down their success, they were worth 69 billion dollars at the moment. Back in 1995 Disney bought ESPN, one of the things that they owned in this trade was the rights to the sportscaster Al Michael’s contract. So when interest sparked up in Disney for new projects possibly starting Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney knew what they had to do.
Disney made a deal with Universal to trade Al Michael’s contract for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. That deal made Oswald’s ownership to fully go to Disney for merchandise and future projects. Oswald later appeared in the 2010 video game Epic Mickey.
So, Disney traded a real person for an animated Rabbit. What’s your opinion, did Disney do the right thing?
