Twas the fans that saved the Coyote vs Acme movie from the evil clutches of a studio looking for a write-off. More Ketchup please!

Some movies get greenlit, shot, and released in a tidy eighteen months. Coyote vs. Acme got greenlit, shot, finished, shelved, mourned, fought over, sold, and — three years, one tax write-off and one very loud fan campaign later — finally opens in theaters on August 28, 2026.

If Wile E. Coyote’s entire cinematic identity is a rocket sled that blows up before it clears the canyon, then his first-ever feature film lived the bit in real time. The coyote didn’t just chase the Road Runner off a cliff this time; Hollywood chased the movie off one, and it took years to climb back up.

The project began life at Warner Bros. as a streaming title bound for HBO Max, blending live action with animation the way Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam once did.

Director Dave Green built the film around a genuinely clever hook: Wile E. Coyote, tired of every Acme product detonating in his face mid-chase, doesn’t just get back up and try again — he lawyers up.

The screenplay, from Samy Burch (working off a story credited to Burch, James Gunn, and Jeremy Slater), took its premise from a 1990 New Yorker piece by Ian Frazier that imagined the coyote’s product-liability lawsuit against the Acme Corporation.

Will Forte plays the down-on-his-luck attorney who takes the case; John Cena plays Acme’s very expensive opposing counsel; Lana Condor and Tone Bell round out the cast, with Eric Bauza — Hollywood’s reigning one-man Looney Tunes ensemble — voicing Bugs, Daffy, Foghorn Leghorn, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd.

Coyote vs Acme movie — built for HBO Max, Left on the Ledge

Then, in November 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery did to the movie exactly what an anvil does to the coyote: dropped it from a great height, without warning, for a tax benefit. The completed $70-million film became one line item in a roughly $115 million impairment charge, filed away alongside Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt — two other finished films that, unlike this one, never got up off the canyon floor.

What made the decision sting was that the movie had reportedly tested well, unlike its hapless protagonist.

Where Wile E. usually just dusts himself off in silence, this fandom did not. Backlash over the shelving was immediate and sustained, and it helped pressure Warner Bros. into letting the filmmakers shop the finished movie elsewhere rather than let it vanish into a studio vault forever.

That process wasn’t quick, either — early bids reportedly came in too low, and the film sat in limbo for another year and a half, an Acme rocket stuck mid-launch.

Coyote vs Acme movie — Ketchup Entertainment to the Rescue

The company that finally caught the falling anvil was Ketchup Entertainment, an independent distributor founded in 2011 by Gareth J. West, Artur Galstian, and Vahan Yepremeyan — not exactly a household name, but one quietly building a Looney Tunes rescue résumé.

In 2024, Ketchup had already scooped up The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, another Warner-shelved animated feature, out of the same content-writeoff wreckage, and steered it to a respectable theatrical run.

That track record made Ketchup the natural landing spot when Warner Bros. finally completed a worldwide sale of Coyote vs. Acme in March 2025, in a deal reported at around $50 million.

The company’s other credits — Hypnotic, Memory, and the Jack Kesy-led Hellboy: The Crooked Man — read like the filmography of a distributor that specializes in giving abandoned or overlooked titles a second sprint at the finish line.

Beep Beep, At Last

The film finally reintroduced itself to the world at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2025, footage and all, nearly two years after its would-be original release. Reviews upon its actual theatrical debut have been strong, with the film landing a “Certified Fresh” 95% on Rotten Tomatoes — proof that sometimes the joke isn’t that the rocket explodes, but that it eventually, gloriously, does not.

After three years of near-misses, shelved release dates, and one genuinely absurd corporate detour, Coyote vs. Acme has done what its hero never quite manages: it caught up. Meep meep.

Twas the fans that saved the Coyote vs Acme movie from the evil clutches of a studio looking for a write-off. More Ketchup please!