Well, well, well. It looks like we may be on track to make a left turn at Albuquerque, after all. Back in November 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav took a giant wrecking ball to Coyote vs. Acme, an animation-live action hybrid film that depicted the most inevitable of all lawsuits: the beleaguered Wile E. Coyote against the ubiquitous-yet-never-effective Acme Corporation. WBD spent an estimated $70 million making the movie, which was finished and testing well with audiences, until Zaslav decided he’d rather just get the tax write-off instead. People were pissed! To the point where Zaslav made a public show of saying he’d consider buyout offers from other studios… only for it to be later revealed in early 2024 that he was shelving the film again, and oh yeah, he’s never actually watched it. And now another sharp turn: a distributor called Ketchup Entertainment is apparently in negotiations to buy Coyote vs. Acme from WBD for about $50 million. What do I think of this plan? To quote the hungry coyote himself: “Genius.”
Warner Bros’ shelved movie Coyote vs. Acme finally might have found a new home with the studio deep in sale negotiations, we can reveal.
Gareth West’s distributor-financier Ketchup Entertainment is negotiating an all-rights acquisition in the $50 million range for the animated/live-action hybrid project. Ketchup last year rescued the same studio’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.
The pact isn’t finalized and there’s still a chance it doesn’t make, but it’s heading in the right direction. Should it get over the live, the film would get a theatrical release in 2026.
The deal would mark a significant and record outlay for Ketchup, whose previous releases have included Michael Keaton starrer Goodrich, comic book reboot Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Ben Affleck thriller Hypnotic, and Michael Franco’s Jessica Chastain drama Memory.
Directed by David Green and written by May December scribe Samy Burch, as well as DC Studios co-boss James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, Coyote vs. Acme is based on the Looney Tunes characters and the New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme” by Ian Frazier.
Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor star in the movie, which follows Wile E. Coyote, who, after Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation. The case pits Wile E. and his lawyer (Forte) against the latter’s intimidating former boss (Cena), but a growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win.
Despite test-screening well, the project became a high-profile casualty of the WB cost-cutting two years ago and it has been sitting on the shelf for more than a year. The studio reportedly screened the movie to a string of buyers in early 2024 with a price tag of around $70M, which is how much the film is said to have cost. Studio sources claim to us that they didn’t get any offers at the time.
Not gonna lie, getting this news mere days after I was bemoaning WBD removing ALL of the classic Looney Tunes episodes from streaming on Max, is well, whiplash, but also feels like a glimmer of hope. Nothing can ever replace the originals, and there is no justice until their streaming status is restored! But still, the fact that we may get Coyote vs. Acme at last does feel like a victory. And if Ketchup really does make the deal and release the film (which seems likely, especially since they’ve already rescued one Looney Tunes project from WBD), you know what we have to do, right folks? We have to turn out in droves to give it a good box office! Nothing would land like a bigger anvil on David Zaslav’s head than seeing this film actually make bank. And after all this time and hype, I am genuinely excited to see what they did with this story. Samy Burch being one of the screenwriters is intriguing. I enjoyed May December a lot. That being said, I would not think the same writer would pen that script and a Looney Tunes movie!
Photos credit: Avalon.red, Getty and via Instagram/Deadline