It's rather fitting that Coyote vs. Acme should have nearly vanished forever. One must remember that Wile E. Coyote has for over seventy years been crushed by boulders, blown up by dynamite, launched into the desert sky and dropped from cliffs, only to shake himself free and try once more. Similarly, the film based on him suffered the same fate. Warner Bros. put it on hold, the public objected, other studios showed an interest, but the deals fell through and for a while it seemed as though it was going to become one of those famous unreleased films about which people would talk about but never get to see. In the end, Coyote vs. Acme did have its premiere in the theatres on August 28, 2026, and the final product is far better than its difficult history had any right to suggest.
Reviewed by Allan R. Ellenberger
The film was directed by Dave Green, with the screenplay written by Samy Burch, the story being developed by Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater and drawing on Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker satire, and it gives one of the oldest jokes in the history of Looney Tunes a highly absurd legal seriousness. After many years of using faulty rockets, having his birdseed explode, relying on spring-loaded devices and other disastrous Acme products, Wile E. Coyote at last decides that he has had enough and therefore employs the struggling personal-injury lawyer Kevin Avery, portrayed by Will Forte, to take legal action against the Acme Corporation. The corporation's lawyer, Buddy Crane, who is slick and entirely corporate, is played by John Cena with just the right amount of smarmy confidence.
Forte is precisely the type of actor suited for this kind of role, since he knows how to perform broad comedy without causing the human elements of the film to come across as more cartoonish than the actual cartoons. Kevin is a broken-down lawyer who comes to see Wile E.'s case as not only absurd but eventually as deeply personal as well.
Lana Condor gives Paige Avery, Kevin's niece, a sense of warmth and energy, while Tone Bell, P.J. Byrne, Martha Kelly and Luis Guzmán all help to create a world in which animated characters and real people can coexist without anyone finding the situation especially odd.
The fundamental idea here naturally brings to mind Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but Coyote vs. Acme wisely avoids attempting to copy that film. Green develops his own style, striking a balance between courtroom comedy, conspiracy satire, and a conventional Looney Tunes short—which at times may have been stretched a bit too far—extended into a feature-length film.
For me, the true pleasure lies in the cartoons themselves; if you were around when Saturday morning involved sitting in front of the television watching Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn and Wile E. Coyote, then this film has the nice sensation of meeting up with old friends you haven't seen for a long time. The people who made the film obviously realize that these characters are associated with generations of memories. They appear in the movie in both major and minor roles, and the guest appearances never amount to nothing more than ticking items off a list. Eric Bauza gives the voices of a number of well-known characters, while Jeff Bergman provides the voices of others, such as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and the wonderfully named Dr. Lorre.
The final element was one of the film's most enjoyable surprises. The movie begins with an animated caricature of Peter Lorre, a splendid instance of Warner Bros. animation looking back at its own studio history. Since Peter Lorre was often parodied in the classic Warner cartoons, it comes as no surprise that his image is here given life as the anxious and destined Dr. Lorre, a scientist at Acme who knows too much about a secret corporate project.
The film realizes that nostalgia by itself isn't sufficient. Hidden behind the anvils, the exploding rockets and the desert dust is a surprisingly sharp satire concerning corporations, the exploitation of consumers, and the imbalance between an ordinary person and a powerful company. This element of the film became almost comically pertinent due to what occurred to the film itself. Warner Bros. had originally planned to release Coyote vs. Acme on July 21, 2023, before withdrawing it from its schedule in April 2022 and replacing it with Barbie. Once the film had been completed and was said to have tested well, Warner Bros. announced on November 9, 2023, that it would not release the production which had cost approximately $70 million and would instead take an estimated $30 million tax write-down.
The reaction came right away, with filmmakers, animation enthusiasts and people in the industry objecting to the notion of a finished film being kept back for accounting reasons. Soon afterwards, Warner Bros. agreed to let the filmmakers show the film to other companies. It is reported that Netflix, Amazon and Paramount all saw the film and made offers, Paramount even suggested a theatrical release, but the talks collapsed due to reports that Warner Bros. wanted about $75 million to $80 million. For a time, it appeared that the movie had overcome one Acme device only to run into another.
Will Forte later remembered the strange situation of being informed that the film had been put on hold right after having heard how much the producers had liked it. Seven days later the cast and crew met on the Warner Bros. lot for what was subsequently called a "funeral screening." Forte went in thinking that the film must be bad. By the time he came out he had come to believe the exact opposite. It was almost too ironic: a movie depicting a small individual confronting a huge corporation was itself caught by one.
The successful rescue was carried out by the independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment, which obtained the global distribution rights in March 2025 in a transaction widely said to amount to $50 million. The company had previously taken on the distribution of another abandoned Looney Tunes feature, The Day the Earth Blew Up. It then gave Coyote vs. Acme the theatrical release that its filmmakers had desired and finally set the U.S. opening date for August 28, 2026.
The critical consensus highlights the film's blend of heart, satire, and Looney Tunes-style mischief, and audience comments frequently refer to it as being funny, nostalgic and unexpectedly moving. The critical reaction has not been uniform. A number of reviewers have thought that the film is a bit too long or that, at times, the feature-length format slows down the rapid pace which was responsible for the original shorts being so excellent. Variety liked the intricate construction and the large number of cameos but maintained that the movie never quite manages to reproduce the anarchic delirium found in the best of the classic Looney Tunes cartoons. These reservations are reasonable. A Road Runner cartoon is meant to unfold over six or seven minutes; it is almost impossible to maintain that kind of pace for more than half an hour.
Yet I enjoyed it, and that is often precisely what a film ought to do. A clear fondness for the history of Warner Bros. cartoons is present in almost every scene, whether it be through well-known characters appearing in the background or through jokes that pass right over the heads of younger audiences but hit home with those of us who grew up with these cartoons. The movie doesn't seem ashamed of the absurdity of Wile E. Coyote or of his endless chase after the Road Runner; on the contrary, it accepts him as one of the great comic survivors.
The conclusion is therefore very satisfying. The story of Coyote versus Acme is in essence about persistence—about being flattened, then getting up and making one more attempt. The same might be said of the film. Warner Bros. dropped the anvil, and, in some way, Wile E. Coyote managed to crawl out from under it. This time, though, he had the final laugh.
Check in tomorrow for my latest Hollywoodland Revue profile on Jaafar Jackson, the actor stepping into one of the most closely watched roles of his career. I’ll be looking at his background, his path into acting, and the attention surrounding his portrayal of Michael Jackson on screen.
If you enjoyed my review of Coyote vs. Acme, I’d love to hear what you thought of the film and its long road to finally reaching audiences. Please leave a comment, rate the post, and share it with other Looney Tunes fans and movie lovers. Your support helps more readers discover The Hollywoodland Revue.
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