UPDATE: Ketchup Entertainment has confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to “Coyote vs Acme” — they paid somewhere in the vicinity of $50M for it. The film is expected to get a theatrical release in 2026.
EARLIER: “Coyote vs Acme” lives! The nixed Warner Bros/Looney Tunes movie has finally found a new home and a potential theatrical release. Ketchup Entertainment is set to acquire the Warner Bros. film, according to reports.
As Deadline reported, Ketchup is negotiating an all-rights acquisition in the $50M range for “Coyote vs. Acme.” It should be noted that the film had a $70M budget.
Ketchup will give “Coyote vs. Acme” a theatrical release, much like their other Looney Tunes acquisition, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” which had originally been produced by Warner Bros. The film had an opening weekend of $3M.
You might be asking, where did Ketchup get this kind of money ($50M!) to save ‘Coyote vs Acme’? The truth is that nobody really knows. Even Deadline is dumbfounded. Maybe their primary source of revenue is in selling Ketchup. We don’t know.
Warner Bros had infamously shelved the already-completed “Coyote vs Acme” as a tax write-off. There wasn’t much of an update about its status, and many figured it had already been written off.
Back in 2023, the film had multiple interested buyers, but Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav decided the best thing to do was to write it off as a $30M tax break. This infuriated the film community, with many worried that it could become a normal course of action for other studios in the future.
A few years ago, “Coyote vs Acme” had test screened. It scored 14 points above the average for a family movie and its final score, reportedly, was in the high 90s. If you’re not fluent in test screening lingo, a movie scoring in the high 90s means 95% of the audience who saw the film rated it “Very Good” or “Excellent.” It rarely happens.
Regardless, we’ll finally get to see what the big deal was as the film, which stars John Cena and Will Forte, is currently eyeing a potential summer release. Will it be a breakout hit or just another ‘Day the Earth Blew Up’?
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.