Four days before its theatrical release, "Coyote vs. Acme" carries a backstory nearly as improbable as anything Wile E. Coyote ever ordered from the Acme catalog. The live-action and animation hybrid, which pits the classic Looney Tunes character against the company that sold him decades of malfunctioning products, was finished and ready for release in 2023 — and then it wasn't.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced that November it would not release the completed film, budgeted at roughly $70 million to $72 million, at all, instead folding it into a reported $30 million tax write-off. The decision, disclosed to the film's own crew only after post-production had wrapped, drew swift criticism across the industry, with filmmakers and guild members arguing that shelving finished work purely for an accounting benefit set a troubling precedent. Days later, facing that backlash, the studio reversed course and said it would seek an outside buyer.
Production had already spanned years by the time Warner Bros. Discovery made its call. Director Dave Green was brought on in 2019, with James Gunn and Jeremy Slater among the writers who helped shape the screenplay's development, and filming took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the spring of 2022.
What followed was more than a year of limbo. Warner Bros. rejected distribution offers from Netflix, Amazon and Paramount Pictures while seeking a sale price between $75 million and $80 million. By early 2024 the studio was reportedly weighing a second write-down instead. It wasn't until March 2025 that independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment acquired worldwide rights for close to $50 million, clearing the way for a film once thought permanently dead to finally reach an audience.
A "spectrum of emotions"
For the cast, the reversal arrived after what they have described as a genuine mourning period. Stars Will Forte and Lana Condor, who play a small-town attorney and his niece taking on Acme's legal team, discussed the ordeal in interviews timed to this week's release.
It was the whole spectrum of emotions all the way to the very top. It was extreme excitement as we were making it. Then it fell off a cliff for a while. That was frustrating and sad, and made me angry for a while. Then back to positive and excitement as Ketchup Entertainment came in and picked it up.
Will Forte, to Gizmodo
Condor, who has called the shelving devastating, said the experience weighed less on her own career than on the film's crew.
This is the first time in my career that this has happened before and I'm hoping it's the last. It was definitely one of those moments in one's career that it's devastating not only for yourself, but — way more importantly — for hundreds of artists who have worked on it for years.
Lana Condor, to Gizmodo
Condor said she attended what colleagues called a "funeral screening" after the shelving decision but held on to the belief that the world would eventually see the finished film.
An unlikely festival stop
The film's path back to public view included a stop at San Diego Comic-Con in July, where Green and members of the cast previewed footage for fans, an unusual promotional path for a movie that spent nearly three years in limbo. Early reviews have been largely favorable; a write-up in The Hollywood Reporter called it one of the more successful blends of live action and animation in recent memory, with the character work handled by voice actor Eric Bauza, who supplies Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn.
"Coyote vs. Acme" opens in theaters Friday through Ketchup Entertainment, a distributor built largely on the kind of mid-budget and shelved studio projects major players have increasingly avoided. Whether or not the film succeeds commercially, its saga has already become a reference point in Hollywood's ongoing argument over tax write-offs, streaming-era consolidation and what studios owe finished work — and the people who made it — once the ledger closes.
