Th-th-th-that’s not all for Coyote vs. Acme, folks. After Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the completed live-action/animated Looney Tunes movie for a tax write-off back in 2023, Wile E. Coyote could finally have his day in court. Film financing and production company Ketchup Entertainment — which released the fully-animated The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie into theaters this week after acquiring the ‘toon from Warner Bros. — is reportedly negotiating a deal to bring Coyote vs. Acme to theaters next year.
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According to Deadline, Ketchup Entertainment is in the process of negotiating an “all-rights acquisition” of Coyote vs. Acme in an estimated $50 million deal. The outlet notes that the potential purchase isn’t finalized, but should Ketchup and Warner Bros. reach a deal, Coyote vs. Acme could get a theatrical release in 2026.
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The news comes after Warner Bros. Discovery removed hundreds of classic Looney Tunes cartoons from its streaming service Max earlier this week.
The film’s human stars — including John Cena and Will Forte — appealed the decision to scrap Coyote vs. Acme, which is directed by Dave Green (Earth to Echo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows) from a script by Samy Burch (May December), Jeremy Slater (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), and James Gunn (Superman), co-chief of DC Studios.
The live-action/CG-animated hybrid is based on Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker humor article “Coyote v. Acme,” and follows the long-suffering Wile E. “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,” according to the logline. “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.”
Warner Bros. previously gave the filmmakers the greenlight to shop Coyote vs. Acme to other potential distributors for a theatrical or streaming release back in 2023, drawing interest from Amazon’s Prime Video, Apple, and Netflix. But a deal never materialized, leaving the first live-action/animated Looney Tunes movie since 2021’s Space Jam: A New Legacy locked inside the WB vault alongside the scrapped Batgirl movie.
In 2023, Green said Coyote vs. Acme was “embraced by test audiences who rewarded us with fantastic scores.” A studio spokesperson previously said that Coyote didn’t align with Warner Bros. Discovery’s pivot away from straight-to-streaming movies in favor of the exclusive theatrical window. (“We do not believe in streaming movies,” CEO David Zaslav told exhibitors at CinemaCon earlier that year.)
“With the re-launch of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in June, the studio has shifted its global strategy to focus on theatrical releases,” the spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “With this new direction, we have made the difficult decision not to move forward with Coyote vs Acme. We have tremendous respect for the filmmakers, cast, and crew, and are grateful for their contributions to the film.”
Coyote vs. Acme was first announced by the former WB regime (then WarnerMedia) in 2020. Originally set for a streaming release on HBO Max, the studio later dated Coyote for a July 21, 2023 release in theaters, only to give that date to the Barbie movie before axing Acme entirely.
