Coyote vs. Acme opened in theaters Friday, nearly three years after Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the finished film and took a $30 million tax writeoff rather than release it. [1] Director Dave Green marked the day on Instagram with a message that read, in part, as vindication: "COYOTE VS. ACME IS FINALLY, GLORIOUSLY, IN THEATERS NOW. Which means one thing. WE WON." [2] The film, distributed by the independent studio Ketchup Entertainment, follows Wile E. Coyote as he hires a personal-injury lawyer, played by Will Forte, to sue the Acme Corporation in court, with John Cena as opposing counsel.
The backstory has become as much a part of the film's identity as anything on screen. Warner Bros. Discovery pulled Coyote vs. Acme from its original 2023 release date to make way for Barbie, then shelved it entirely that November, following the same playbook the studio had used a year earlier on Batgirl. [1] Ketchup Entertainment bought the finished film for a reported $50 million in a sale that closed in March 2025, and the company, which also released Warners' The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie theatrically, spent roughly three years and a full acquisition to get a movie that already existed onto screens. [1]
Deadline's review of the film, published August 12, does not hedge: critic Pete Hammond calls it "the best animated/live action hybrid since Robert Zemeckis' classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit hit screens four decades ago," and notes the film opens with a card reading "A fully owned subsidiary of the Acme Corporation," directly under the Warner Bros. logo — the studio's own writeoff turned into the movie's first joke. [1] The closing credits carry a more sincere line: a dedication thanking everyone "who protested, wrote emails, stood with signs outside" to support the campaign to get the film seen. [1]
That campaign is the film's other authorship story, and it is where Green's "we won" framing gets its evidentiary weight. Deadline's own reporting on the film's release-day celebration frames the persistence of fans and cast as the mechanism that moved a finished, reviewed-well movie from a tax ledger back onto a screen — Green told Deadline the release was "a celebration" and "proof that movies don't just go away," crediting a "shared experience" built by "the cast and crew, post, prep, and animation teams" who worked on it "over years and years." [2] Will Forte, in earlier Deadline coverage of the shelving itself, described his own reaction in blunter terms: "extreme frustration, fiery frustration, a lot of anger." [1]
What trade coverage has treated as a clean underdog arc is, on the studio's own numbers, a more ambiguous commercial verdict still being written. Warner Bros. Discovery's original writeoff assumed the finished film was worth less than $30 million in tax value, full stop. Ketchup's $50 million purchase price already exceeds that assumption before a single ticket sold, which on its face argues the writeoff undervalued the asset. But Ketchup also spent roughly $10 million marketing a movie a major studio would have spent several times that on, and the film's box office now has to clear a bar neither Warner Bros. nor Ketchup has stated publicly: whether Coyote vs. Acme was shelved because it wasn't good, because it wasn't going to make money, or because a merged conglomerate's tax strategy simply preferred a writeoff to a theatrical release regardless of the film's quality.
The debate over which reading is correct is already playing out under Deadline's own review, rather than waiting for critics to settle it. [1] One reader, responding the same day the film opened, argued it would "top at $50m domestic and even less overseas," predicting the modest ceiling would retroactively validate Warner Bros.' original writeoff decision. Another countered that the film "could also remain popular further down the line because of it being a great film," separating the critical verdict from the commercial one entirely — a distinction the writeoff itself never had to make, because a film that never opens generates neither.
The reviews and the eventual box office may simply not agree, which is its own answer to the question the writeoff always posed. Warner Bros. Discovery's 2023 decision assumed a film's theatrical value could be reduced to a single number on a balance sheet before any audience ever saw it. Coyote vs. Acme's theatrical run is the first real-world test of that assumption against a movie critics are calling one of the best of its kind in decades — and against a company, Ketchup, that already paid $50 million to bet the studio's arithmetic was wrong.
-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles