There’s a darn good reason for you to find the time and funds to take yourself to a movie theater this weekend, and it’s not just because their air conditioners tend to be functioning way better than mine. Because every dime you spend toward supporting the feel-good effort of the summer–and perhaps longer–makes the decision that one of the least creative-friendly executives to ever hold a CEO title look that much less prescient.
COYOTE VS. ACME is actually exhibiting at more than 3500 theatres on this blistering and humid final weekend of August, a de facto victory celebration unto itself. Yesterday THE WRAP’s Drew Taylor provided what could easily be the voiceover script for any such fete:
In “Looney Tunes” canon, there isn’t a character as frequently pancaked, dynamited or run over by a train that came out of a tunnel painted on the side of a canyon as Wile E. Coyote, who first appeared in the 1949 short “Fast and Furry-ous” alongside his foil the Roadrunner. And yet, his ineffable spirit remains. The coyote is the persistent embodiment of picking yourself up, dusting yourself off (or picking up your body parts that have been strew across a sandy gorge) and trying again – to catch that rascally Roadrunner, for sure, but also to follow your dreams, chase the rainbow, whatever.
And it’s that spirit of resilience that the team behind “Coyote vs. Acme” found themselves drawing upon in some very trying times, with the movie – an adaptation of a 1990 New Yorker short story that sees Wile E. Coyote hire an ambulance-chasing lawyer for wronged cartoon characters (Will Forte) to fight the Acme corporation over its defective products – effectively killed by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery before getting an unlikely reprieve from distributor Ketchup Entertainment.
And as DEADLINE’s Armando Tinoco added within minutes of Taylor, the coyote-embodying guy behind that oddly-monickered upstart is especially giddy:
Coyote vs. Acme has made its way to theaters, and director Dave Green is expressing his gratitude. “COYOTE VS. ACME IS FINALLY, GLORIOUSLY, IN THEATERS NOW. Which means one thing. WE WON,” Green shared on Instagram. “You can go see this movie. In a theater. In your favorite seat. With your favorite snacks. With your favorite people. You can head into a dark room and laugh with strangers. Together. Congratulations to everyone who made this happen.”…Coyote vs. Acme was originally set to premiere July 21, 2023, but Warner Bros. moved it to make way for Barbie. However, in November of that same year, the studio shelved the movie and instead took a $30 million tax write-off.
As Taylor elucidated, that decision was made by one of our formerly more frequent targets for snark and mockery, especially when he was in hindsight lying through his teeth that he actually gave two craps about anything other than the bottom line:
In November 2023 Warner Bros., now Warner Bros. Discovery under CEO David Zaslav, said that the film was fully completed but that the studio would not actually release it. Instead, it would shelve the movie indefinitely and pick up a $30 million tax write-off. This wasn’t the first time it had done something like this; a nearly finished “Batgirl” movie, with Michael Keaton returning as Batman and Brendan Fraser as the villain, was also shelved and an animated “Scooby-Doo” movie, “Scoob! Holiday Haunt,” was canceled after almost being finished.
We used to love to pile onto who we coined as Yosemite Zas when he actually mattered. And I suppose the pragmatist in me who is a slave to numbers could look at the cold hard facts that Tinoco’s ever-niggly colleague Anthony D’Allessandro shared yesterday might be a reality check that Zaslav’s decision at a time where he was looking at a mere $2 billion in debt was defendable, as one needed to qualify its early results in the context of competing against bona fide hitd:
While the opening-weekend numbers are encouraging, they do not necessarily spell financial success for Ketchup, which reportedly paid around $50 million for the film’s worldwide rights before marketing costs. If Coyote vs. Acme finishes its domestic run with three times its projected opening, it would earn approximately $36-42 million in North America. International box office, home entertainment, and licensing revenue might therefore be crucial to the film’s path toward profitability.The filmmakers did a fantastic job with the animation, which, along with the cast’s incredible commitment, made the movie immersive, with real stakes that allowed viewers to draw a connection between Acme Corporation and its real-life counterparts… After decades of using faulty Acme products in his quest to catch the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote hires Kevin Avery and his ragtag team of associates to represent him in court against Acme’s powerful legal team in a corrupt court influenced by power and money.John Cena is brilliant as the company’s lawyer, Buddy Crane, completely committing to the bit as the film’s villain alongside a class-unconscious Foghorn Leghorn, who is the CEO of Acme. The rest of the cast also shines, treating the film’s central conflict with the seriousness it requires while maintaining a level of whimsy within its cartoon context.
ROGER EBERT.com’s Brian Tallerico later added his own accolades:
Consistently clever and funny, Dave Green’s “Coyote vs. Acme” opens with the funny credit that this is “Based on a True Story.” The true story behind the fight to get this film seen could someday make for a fun behind-the-scenes documentary about the perils of making anti-monopoly films for a company that wants to rule the world, but it’s just one of the first of many smart, unexpected jokes in a movie filled with them. In a time when excuses for children’s entertainment are often just marketing to get kids to buy new toys or force their parents to maintain a streaming subscription, “Coyote vs. Acme” understands that you can be both gloriously silly and remarkably smart at the same time. It’s got a few minor pacing and length issues that keep it from animated perfection, but this ode to the resilience of a homicidal canine is almost inspirational in its final beats, reminding us that we’re all, in a sense, chasing our own unobtainable Road Runners. Meep meep.
The sharp script by “May/December” scribe Samy Burch (working from a 1990 The New Yorker article) unfolds in a world reminiscent of the masterful “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” one in which cartoon characters and real people live side by side. After a clever opening sequence in which a cartoon Dr. Lorre is hunted by armed soldiers (just the use of “dehydrated boulders” to escape had me laughing already), Green gives us a true Coyote vs. Road Runner sequence for the ages, and arguably the best scene in the film…Nursing his wounds at home for the umpteenth time, Coyote sees an ad for a law firm that asks, “Been in a cartoon accident?” It’s the marketing of Avery, Jones, and Maltese (a reference to legendary animators Tex, Chuck, and Michael), a Saul Goodman-esque company that exists to settle cartoon grievances, often against the all-powerful Acme Corporation (owned by Foghorn Leghorn, of course).
It’s those sorts of endearing puns and homages that has made ROGER RABBIT an enduring and endearing presence on Disney platforms even to this day nearly four decades after its theatrical release, now multi-generational in its appeal and educating the Gen Z and Alpha babies of what we older farts of what and why we found Looney Tunes appealing even before one had enough schooling to understand all of those World War II-era references. To younger audiences today, the fact that Foghorn Leghorn’s bluster was inspired by an old-time radio comedy character is equally as irrelevant as references to Petrillo were to me when Bugs Bunny employed an ape to terrorize residents into forking over their life savings as an organ grinder who reforms an ape to do what monkeys typically did.
And that gives me that much confidence that anything evoking such comparisons will continue to grow audience and indeed tap into those revenue streams that Lang referenced long after Yosemite Zas actually leaves the building and has lapsed into utter irrelevance–counting his billions, to be sure, but not capable of sharing even a smattering of the joy and laughter resonating through those 3500-plus screens this weekend. Even D’Alessandro’s pragmatic notes included this support: Coyote vs. Acme is 95% certified fresh with critics and 92% with audiences, which will only help the pic. Now the question is whether it expands beyond its core fervent social media fanbase.
I plan to do my part. And unless you’re a better draw or more capable of handling an anvil than I am, I’d encouraging you to do same. Be a coyote, so to speak.
Until next time…