FILM · 2026 · USA
Coyote vs. Acme
- Directed by
- Dave Green
- Runtime
- 103 min
- Studio
- Troll Court Entertainment, Keylight Pictures, Warner Animation Group
40 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
After Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (40)
- #001
Coyote vs. Acme is loosely adapted from Ian Frazier's article "Coyote v. Acme," published in The New Yorker in 1990; the article itself draws on elements of the Looney Tunes cartoons.
- #002
Scott Rudin Productions acquired the rights to Frazier's article in 1998 but could not obtain Warner Bros.' permission to film it, and the options lapsed in 2006.
- #003
Development began in August 2018 with Chris McKay producing and a screenplay by Jon and Josh Silberman; Dave Green was hired as director in December 2019. Samy Burch, Jeremy Slater and James Gunn joined the script development process in 2020, while John Cena, Will Forte and Lana Condor were added to the cast in early 2022.
- #004
James Gunn successfully pitched Coyote vs. Acme to Warner in 2015, and asked Jeremy Slater to write the first draft because of their friendship, which included growing up with Looney Tunes.
- #005
Live-action shooting took place in New Mexico between March and May 2022.
- #006
In November 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the film for a tax write-off; after public backlash the decision was reversed and the producers were allowed to seek another distributor. Following unsuccessful talks with various distributors, Ketchup Entertainment bought the rights to the film for $50 million in March 2025; the company had previously struck a similar deal for Warner Bros. Animation's The Day the Earth Blew Up (2024).
- #007
Warner Bros. Pictures announced in August 2018 that it was developing a Wile E. Coyote project titled Coyote vs. Acme, with Chris McKay as producer and Jon and Josh Silberman writing the script.
- #008
The film was screened at San Diego Comic-Con on July 25, 2026, and was released in the United States on August 28, 2026.
- #009
In mid-December 2019, Warner Animation Group hired Dave Green to direct Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action/animated hybrid, and replaced Jon and Josh Silberman as screenwriters while keeping them as producers.
- #010
The name of the lawyer Kevin Avery, played by Will Forte, comes from Looney Tunes animator Tex Avery.
- #011
Chris McKay left Coyote vs. Acme in December 2020, and the Silbermans stepped down as producers to return to screenwriting alongside Samy Burch, Slater and Gunn.
- #012
Buddy Crane, the Acme lawyer played by John Cena, was conceived as Kevin's rival at Harvard Law School and takes his name from Buddy, one of the original Looney Tunes characters.
- #013
Coyote vs. Acme's final writing credits, issued in March 2023, gave Samy Burch sole screenplay credit and a shared story credit with Slater and Gunn, with additional literary credit to Alex Cuthbertson, Jacob Fleisher, Matt Fusfeld, Dan Goor, BenDavid Grabinski, Craig Wright and Jon and Josh Silberman.
- #014
Eric Bauza leads the voice cast, which includes Foghorn Leghorn, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety, Road Runner and Dr. Lorre.
- #015
Coyote vs. Acme was confirmed in November 2022 to feature Foghorn Leghorn, Granny, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety.
- #016
Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam were confirmed for Coyote vs. Acme in December 2022.
- #017
Porky Pig was confirmed to appear in Coyote vs. Acme in January 2023.
- #018
Editor Carsten Kurpanek characterized the story of Coyote vs. Acme as a "David vs. Goliath story" about Wile E. Coyote's persistence against the Acme Corporation's "cynical and casual cruelness of capitalism and corporate greed."
- #019
Dave Green said his first approach to Coyote vs. Acme was to blend a true-crime documentary with a legal drama. He named The Insider (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000) and A Few Good Men (1992) as influences on that approach.
- #020
Dave Green said the tone of Ian Frazier's original article was central to adapting Coyote vs. Acme, because it discussed Acme's product liability in the language of a legal filing. That tone let the filmmakers pair serious legal conventions with Looney Tunes physical comedy.
- #021
John Cena was cast in Coyote vs. Acme in February 2022 as the film's secondary antagonist, a lawyer defending Acme and the former boss of Wile E.'s lawyer.
- #022
Principal photography on Coyote vs. Acme ran from March to May 2022 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Brandon Trost as cinematographer.
- #023
Coyote vs. Acme's creative team cited Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) as a reference for blending live action with animated characters.
- #024
David Barclay constructed a life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet so that actors on Coyote vs. Acme could interact with it.
- #025
Dave Green named the metal-detector sequence, filmed on the second day of shooting, as the hardest he had to direct on Coyote vs. Acme, requiring roughly a few dozen background actors to find the eyeline of an invisible character; he still called it his favorite.
- #026
DNEG handled visual effects and computer animation for Wile E. Coyote and other major Looney Tunes characters in Coyote vs. Acme.
- #027
According to director Dave Green, the film's 3D animators collaborated closely with 2D artists, who supplied drawn poses and expressions to help them find what he called the building blocks of performance.
- #028
Editor Carsten Kurpanek said artists first made black-and-white line drawings of key poses over a rough edit, which then served as reference for visual effects and animation in a process the crew called "sketchviz."
- #029
Duncan Studio provided traditional animation for a handful of shots featuring significant Looney Tunes characters, and some characters were handled entirely in 2D; Bugs Bunny was one of them because he was not originally planned for the film, with the Acme whistleblower first scripted as an escaped Dr. Lorre.
- #030
Steven Price announced that he composed the score for Coyote vs. Acme following the announcement of the film's initial cancellation.
- #031
The soundtrack for Coyote vs. Acme was released digitally through WaterTower Music on August 21, 2026, one week ahead of the film's release.
- #032
A physical vinyl edition of the Coyote vs. Acme soundtrack is planned for the first quarter of 2027 via iam8bit and WaterTower Music.
- #033
Coyote vs. Acme featured the DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels song "Nobody Speak."
- #034
Critics examined how Coyote vs. Acme portrays corporate power and consumer culture, drawing connections to the film's own attempted shelving. Catherine Wheatley of Sight and Sound wrote that Wile E. Coyote is a "high usage user" of Acme products, stuck in a loop of buying goods that keep failing him.
- #035
Catherine Wheatley of Sight and Sound called Kevin Avery's fight against Acme "Capra-esque," likening him to a modern James Stewart and pointing to parallels with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It Happened One Night (1934).
- #036
Catherine Wheatley characterized Coyote vs. Acme as a family film that also works as political satire, incorporating courtroom drama and 1970s conspiracy thriller elements.
- #037
Justin Chang of The New Yorker drew a parallel between Coyote vs. Acme's story of an underdog facing a powerful corporation and the film's own history at Warner Bros. Discovery, calling the premise a metaphor for the circumstances of its attempted shelving.
- #038
Chang highlighted Wile E.'s persistence despite repeated failure, pointing out that the Coyote vs. Acme screenplay mentions Sisyphus more than once.
- #039
British litigator David Allen Green described Coyote vs. Acme as a good, even great, film about commercial law.
- #040
According to David Allen Green, Coyote vs. Acme realistically depicts lawyers' efforts to reach a settlement, the significance of evidence discovery and what motivates the parties.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Wikipedia (EN)
- Wikipedia Coyote vs. Acme — Wikipedia
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