Ernie Hudson joins killer cartoon flick Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole

We all know how Ernie Hudson feels about ghosts, but what are his thoughts on soul-sucking cartoon rabbits? According to Deadline, we'll find out soon enough as the actor has signed on for director Lilton Stewart III's Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole.

Here's how the film is described on the official YouTube page: "Art and some of his closest friends help track down his long-lost family lineage. When they find and explore his Great-Grandpa Oswald's abandoned home, they encounter a magical TV that teleports them to a place lost in time, shrouded by dark Hollywood Magic. 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. Art and his friends must work together to escape their magical prison before the Rabbit gets to them first."

Sounding like a scary version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with some Cool World mixed in, Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole will star Hudson as Oswald as well as Topher Hall and Yasha Rayzberg as brothers Art and Evan, two members of the search party.

Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole marks another entry in the trend of taking beloved children's characters, some of whom have fallen into the public domain and turning them into monsters. The Mean One attempted to out-Grinch the Grinch and Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey has spawned an entire cinematic universe. It might be time to coin the term Public Doom-ain for these films.

However, the lucky rabbit might not be the most recognizable of cartoon characters. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks who set up animated Oswald The Lucky Rabbit shorts with Universal who took over ownership of the character, a move that lead Disney to dream up Mickey Mouse. Universal kept the rights to the character though his appearances really dried up in the 1930s!

Oswald gained a new lease on pop culture life when Disney made a deal with Universal that resulted in the character joining the House of Mouse and appearing in the 2010 video game Epic Mickey. Since then, Disney has released plenty of Oswald merch, established Oswald's Filling Station at Disney's California Adventure and he has appeared in the rest of the Epic Mickey games and the Disney Speedstorm racing game. He even got his own short about a year ago.

However, the copyright on those early shorts and the character have run out, which is expertly explained over on Cartoon Brew, so folks like Stewart -- who has mainly released shorts, but has a lot of other projects in the works right now -- can direct this film. To fully lean into the character's origins, the filmmakers released a trailer announcing the project with footage from "Trolley Troubles" (see below) and the official website currently features some of that same animation.

Hudson has had a varied career going back to the late 1970s, but he made a huge impact through his roles as Winston Zeddmore in the Ghostbusters films as well as Albrecht in The Crow, though he also appeared in Leviathan, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and most recently Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.

Oswald: Down The Rabbit Hole is scheduled to start filming this spring.