Why Coyote vs. Acme Was Shelved — And How the Movie Finally Escaped Warner Bros.

Coyote vs. Acme opened in theaters August 28. That alone is the news, because for a long stretch this was a finished movie that Warner Bros. had decided nobody would ever see. Early estimates track it toward roughly $14 million domestically for its opening weekend, landing behind holdovers Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey — a modest number for an independent release, and still an estimate rather than a confirmed final gross. The more interesting story isn’t the box office. It’s how the movie got to theaters at all.

Why Warner Bros. shelved it

Coyote vs. Acme wrapped production in 2023 as a completed film, directed by Dave Green and written by Samy Burch from a story credited to Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater. It’s a legal comedy loosely inspired by Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker piece imagining Wile E. Coyote suing Acme Corporation over its faulty products, with Will Forte as the down-on-his-luck lawyer who takes the case and John Cena as the opposing counsel representing Acme.

On November 9, 2023, Deadline reported that Warner Bros. Discovery would shelve the finished film entirely rather than release it, taking a reported $30 million tax write-off in the process. That figure describes the write-off, not a cash payout, and it’s a separate number from the movie’s roughly $70 million production budget. WBD’s decision followed the same post-merger cost-cutting logic that had already led the studio to scrap the completed Batgirl and the animated Scoob! Holiday Haunt, and Coyote vs. Acme quickly became the most visible example of a finished film being written off rather than released.

Warner didn’t simply change its mind

The backlash was immediate, from filmmakers, critics and the film’s own cast, and it worked fast: by November 13, just four days later, WBD reversed course and said it would allow the movie to be shopped to other buyers instead of writing it off entirely. That’s a meaningfully different outcome than Warner deciding to release it themselves. Reporting at the time described interest from other studios and streamers during that shopping period, but Warner Bros. Discovery had reportedly set an asking price in the $75-80 million range, and by early 2024 no buyer had met it. Campaigns like #ReleaseCoyoteVsAcme kept public pressure on the situation through most of that year.

How Ketchup Entertainment got it made

The deal that actually moved the film forward came in March 2025, when independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment acquired the North American distribution rights for a reported $50 million — well below Warner’s original asking price, but enough to get the film out of limbo. Ketchup, a smaller distributor best known for handling 2025’s The Day the Earth Blew Up, took the finished movie to Cannes to line up international deals and set its own theatrical date for August 28, 2026, nearly three years after the film had wrapped.

Official key art for Coyote vs. Acme. Credit: Ketchup Entertainment.

The box-office comeback, so far

A promotional image marking the film’s theatrical release. Credit: Ketchup Entertainment.

Ketchup hasn’t disclosed an exact theater count for the release, though for scale, The Day the Earth Blew Up topped out around 2,827 screens last year — a useful reference point for what an independent distributor’s “wide release” actually looks like next to a major studio’s. Early tracking for Coyote vs. Acme moved up over the week, from projections in the $8-10 million range to the mid-teens after a stronger-than-expected $1.7 million Thursday preview night, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day held the top spot for a fifth straight weekend. Where the final number lands after Sunday actuals come in will say more about the film’s commercial prospects than any single estimate can right now.

Why this became a bigger story than the movie itself

The saga mattered beyond one Looney Tunes movie because it put a specific, uncomfortable question in front of the industry: what happens to a finished piece of work when a studio decides releasing it isn’t worth the cost, and who gets to see it if nobody stands to profit? Coyote vs. Acme became the answer’s test case largely by accident — it was completed, it tested well, and the backlash to shelving it was loud enough that Warner Bros. Discovery couldn’t just quietly write it off and move on. Batgirl never got that reversal. Scoob! Holiday Haunt didn’t either.

What’s settled now is simpler than the box office. A movie that was, by Warner’s own initial decision, never supposed to reach an audience is currently playing in theaters across the country. Whatever the final opening-weekend number turns out to be, that part of the story already has its ending.