It’s finally really real. Warner Bros.’ long-buried live-action/animation hybrid Coyote Vs. Acme, starring John Cena and Will Forte alongside Wile. E. Coyote and Daffy Duck, has received its first proper trailer and is seemingly really definitely reaching big screens on August 28! And it appears to have come out swinging, with a trailer that repeatedly throws shade at Warner Bros. and the ordeal the production has been through, while still looking like a charmingly silly and superbly put together romp.
It was in November 2023 that the team behind Coyote Vs. Acme were blindsided by the news that Warner Bros. had decided to vault the movie instead of releasing it, seemingly as part of the studio’s disgraceful run of turning creations into tax write-offs. While the infamous Batgirl situation was internally justified by claims that the movie was nowhere near good enough and had bombed at test screenings, no such claims could be made about the Coyote flick given other distributors were interested in buying the rights and it was scoring well in early screenings. It seemed Warner were just vaulting the film simply to write off a rumored $30 million in tax as it dealt with its growing debt.
Two years later, there was some very surprising good news. Independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment had somehow acquired the rights to the movie, and intended to release it to theaters in 2026. Seemingly the turmoil within Warner and the scale of the industry backlash at the actions had allowed the deal, claimed to be worth $50 million, to come together, following Ketchup’s similar move with another canned Looney Tunes movie, The Day the Earth Blew Up.
Which brings us to the trailer, and it’s a thing of joy. As well as giving the basic framework of the story—Wile. E. Coyote enlists the help of lawyer Will Forte to sue ACME for his lifetime of injuries resulting from their dodgy products—it also rather brilliantly places ACME in the role of Warner Bros. themselves.
“The movie Acme doesn’t want you to see,” the trailer states, framing the whole affair as if it were an exposé of the corporation while directly referencing the extent to which Warner went to prevent the film’s release. That’s after an opening spoof of the WB logo with an asterisk, zooming into the smallprint that reads, “A wholly owned subsidiary of the Acme corporation,” just to make sure you know they know you know.
And if there were any doubt about the overt digs, there are those final words: “The Acme corporation is releasing this film for accounting purposes only.”
Beyond the satirical asides, this also shows a movie I’m very interested to see. There are some fine gags, a cartoon piano crushing a real-world car, and just a great plot idea on top. Also, I’m really taken by how correctly shaded the cartoon characters look—too many of these films try to add all sorts of extra shading or 3D effects that reduce their cartoon origins, but this looks like it’s been gotten just right.
Looney Tunes movies have a great history of combining live action with animation in films like the underrated 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action and, well, at least one Space Jam movie. Let’s hope this can live up to the quality of what we’ve seen so far when it’s finally ours to see in August.