Hollywood tried to kill Coyote vs. Acme. Audiences had other ideas

Almost ten years after the original idea, an animated movie with a background story almost as agonising as the movie itself has finally hit theatresIt is not that often that a movie comes along that shakes the industry, regardless of its story. Jaws introduced the summer blockbuster, The Matrix revolutionised CGI and the Sharknado franchise proved that there is no idea too dumb for Hollywood. Coyote vs. Acme, the live-action animated film about Wile E Coyote suing the fictional ACME Corporation, starring Will Forte and John Cena, is one of the most important movies ever. It is a testament to perseverance, to good work and to not backing down in the face of insurmountable odds. In 1990, columnist Ian Frazier had a wacky idea for an article in The New Yorker: long-suffering Looney Tunes character Wile E Coyote takes the ACME Corporation, the in-universe mega-corporation that sells all the contraptions that fail to work properly every time, to court, suing them for negligence. The whole article is the opening statement of Wile’s fictional lawyer. Fast-forward to 2015, when James Gunn, the current head of DC Studios and then director of Guardians of the Galaxy, pitches a Coyote vs. Acme movie to Warner Bros. A screenplay is put together and the whole thing is presented as Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets A Few Good Men, with Wile being the underdog who takes on the giant corporation. The movie doesn’t get a green light, but the idea gains traction and is never truly abandoned. In 2016, director Dave Green hears about the project and has his agent contact Warner and express his interest in directing it. As he had just made TMNT: Out of the Shadows, Warner execs dust off the script and decide to give it a second go. Additional scripts are made and, in 2018, Warner announces that it is moving forward with the project. In December 2020, Warner announces a release date: July 21, 2023. Pre-production starts in 2021 and Will Forte and John Cena are hired to star. Principal photography starts in March 2022 but, a few weeks later, a major obstacle arises: Warner decides to give the release date to Barbie to capitalise on extremely positive early screenings. By mid-2023 post-production is completed. Warner had a completed movie. There was nothing left to do but release it. The team anxiously waits for news and, by autumn 2023, they start to get worried. Warner had just finished a major merger with Discovery and they are afraid that the new regime might throw them under the bus. Their fears become a reality. New boss David Zaslav – the same person who had the brilliant idea to rebrand HBO Max as Max, a decision so catastrophic he later had to retreat back to the HBO name – announces that the studio is dropping Coyote vs. Acme. The news is met with outrage. The crew publicly express their disappointment as fans criticise Warner for its cut-throat tactics. The suits are not to be convinced, though: the movie is buried, never to see the light of day. A note: according to reporters, board members scrapped the movie without even watching it. After a much bigger backlash than expected, Warner announces it will sell the movie to streamers. Netflix, Prime and Apple express interest, but the price tag set by Warner is too high: $75 to $80 million. The movie appears to be truly doomed. Almost out of nowhere, in 2025, an independent distributor called Ketchup Entertainment expresses interest in acquiring the rights for a limited theatrical release. They enter negotiations with Warner, whose executives now realise that if the deal goes sour because of them, they will be the target of widespread outrage. They put a sensible price on it, selling it for $50 million. Ketchup Entertainment kicks off a promotional marketing campaign that is far more successful than they expect. So successful, in fact, that they abandon plans for a limited release and instead go for a full global release. The movie opens on August 28 and it is an instant hit. Critics praise it and audiences love it. So far, the movie has raked in $50 million at the global box office, becoming a huge success for Ketchup. If you want to catch it in cinemas in Cyprus, you will have to wait, though, as it opens on October 28. A major win for the little guy!