'Coyote vs. Acme' Crossed $100 Million. The Write-Off Got Written Off.

In November 2023, Warner Bros. looked at a completed Looney Tunes movie — finished, scored, ready to release — and decided it was worth more dead than alive. The studio shelved Coyote vs. Acme as part of a roughly $30 million tax write-down, which is the corporate equivalent of setting a birthday cake on fire for the insurance money. The backlash was immediate and ferocious, and to the studio's partial credit, it relented just enough to let the filmmakers shop the movie elsewhere. Ketchup Entertainment bought it for a reported $50 million. Somebody at Ketchup has earned their bonus in perpetuity.

Here is what happened next. Coyote vs. Acme opened in theaters on August 28, 2026. It debuted to $15.9 million domestic, finishing second for the weekend. Then it did the thing movies are supposed to do but rarely do anymore: it held. Sturdy legs, week after week, until the North American total climbed past $54 million by its fourth weekend and the worldwide gross crossed $100 million. On Rotten Tomatoes it sits at 96% Certified Fresh from critics and 94% from audiences, with an A CinemaScore — the kind of across-the-board affection that money cannot buy and, as it turns out, that a $30 million write-down cannot kill. It became the number-one most-watched movie on PVOD. It hit digital on September 29. The cake, it turns out, was delicious.

The reviews read like apologies from an industry that almost let this happen. The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck called it one of the best live-action/animation films ever. RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico wrote that it's 'a reminder that there are ways to homage decades of animated comedy without feeling like fan service.' The New York Times' Alissa Wilkinson noted the film springs from the brains of Looney Tunes obsessives without tipping into pandering. Director Dave Green, who once thought reaching theaters was fanciful, told TheWrap: 'This is all a dream that I never imagined possible.' Dreams, unlike tax strategies, tend to sell tickets.

The premise, for the uninitiated, is gloriously stupid in the way only the best comedies are: Wile E. Coyote — silent, singed, undefeated in defeat — sues the Acme Corporation for decades of faulty products, with Will Forte as his lawyer, Lana Condor alongside, and John Cena as Acme's counsel. It is based, beautifully, on Ian Frazier's 1990 New Yorker article treating the coyote's grievances as a real legal case, expanded by writers Samy Burch, Jeremy Slater, and James Gunn into a David-and-Goliath courtroom comedy. A movie about holding a monopoly accountable for defective products, shelved by a conglomerate for a tax benefit. You cannot write satire this neat. The universe did it for free.

The moral is not that the internet was right — the internet is right the way a stopped clock is right. The moral is narrower and more damning: the film was always good. The test screenings were good, the filmmakers knew it was good, the eventual audience knew it was good, and the only party that looked at a finished, good movie and saw a write-down was the one holding the checkbook. Coyote vs. Acme did not succeed despite being shelved; it succeeded because shelving it made the release a referendum, and the referendum came back 96 to 4. Somewhere there is a spreadsheet with a $30 million write-down on it. Next to it, now, there is a $100 million gross. I know which cell I'd rather defend in a meeting. Grade: A — for the movie, and for the middle finger.