A lot of things are currently on the shelf - myself included. But Warner Bros’ film Coyote vs. Acme - much like my batch cooking pan - might finally be coming off the shelf and into action as acquisition negotiations are underway, Deadline reported.
The film which was shelved in 2023 might be heading to Keptchup Entertainment who are currently negotiating an all-rights acquisition rumoured to be around the $50 million mark. However, the deal isn’t currently confirmed so there is a chance it will stay unreleased for now. Ketchup Entertainment was also the same studio behind the release of another Looney Tunes movie, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.
Based on the original Looney Tunes characters and Ian Fraizer’s New Yorker article Coyote v. Acme, the film has been written by a trio of big industry names, including Samy Burch, James Gunn, and Jeremy Slater. It stars Will Forte, John Cena, and Lana Condor in principal roles, and has been directed by David Green. The wider cast includes P.J Byrne, Tone Bell, and Martha Kelly.
The film itself follows Wile E. Coyote who decides to hire a big-shot lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation after being failed by Acme’s products one too many times. Wile E.’s lawyer (Forte) goes head to head against Acme’s lawyer, played by Cena. Friendships strike up between man and cartoon, giving each more fuel to win the ongoing legal battle.
Development began in 2018 with Chris McKay producing, and the majority of the cast were confirmed at the beginning of 2022. The live-action filming took place in New Mexico from March-May in 2022. It was originally going to be theatrically released in the US in July 2023, but the studio indefinitely removed the film from its release schedule and replaced it with Barbie - which to be fair might have been a solid shout, as Barbie ended up being the highest grossing film of 2023 at $1.446 billion.
It was shelved in late 2023 as a tax write-off, but the decision was later reversed owing to public backlash, unsurprisingly. Warner Bros Discovery said it wrote off $115M in content in its February 2024 earnings filing, all due to abandoning films in the third quarter of 2023. It was speculated that Coyote vs Acme was part of this total.
If this deal goes through, the Coyote v. Acme is likely to be released in 2026, so watch this space…
Photo credit: Warner Bros.
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