“Coyote vs. Acme” lives! The nixed Warner Bros./Looney Tunes film has finally dropped a trailer. Huge Looney Tuned fan here, so I’ll be watching this one — the animation looks gorgeous.
Last year, Ketchup Entertainment acquired the worldwide rights to “Coyote vs. Acme” — reportedly paying somewhere in the vicinity of $50M for it. They will be giving “Coyote vs. Acme” a theatrical release this coming summer, much like its other Looney Tunes acquisition, “The Day the Earth Blew Up,” which was originally produced by Warner Bros. That film opened to $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 the trades were dumbfounded. Maybe their primary source of revenue is 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 assumed it had already been written off. Then Ketchup came to save the day.
Back in 2023, the film reportedly had multiple interested buyers, but Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav decided the best course was to write it off as a $30M tax break. This infuriated the film community, with many worried it could become a precedent for other studios.
A few years ago, “Coyote vs. Acme” test screened and scored 14 points above the average for a family film. Its final score, reportedly, was in the high 90s—meaning 95% of audiences rated it “Very Good” or “Excellent.” That’s extremely rare.
Regardless, we’ll finally get to see what the big deal was when the film—starring John Cena and Will Forte—arrives in theaters, currently eyeing an August 28, 2026 release. Will it be a breakout hit, or just another “The Day the Earth Blew Up”?