An independent film company bought the movie and will be releasing it on Friday, Aug. 28

We independently select everything we recommend. Buying through us may earn us a commission, which supports our work.

In 2022, the cast and crew of Coyote vs. Acme attended a “funeral screening.”

It was as grim as it sounds. Warner Bros. had already announced the finished film was going to be forever shelved. Studio execs had controversially decided to take a $30-million tax write-off as a cost-saving exercise rather than take on the expense of releasing and distributing it.

The film’s stars, Will Forte and Lana Condor, were among those went to the screening. The mood was not jubilant, to say the least, even though everyone was impressed with what they saw on the screen.

“That experience of watching the film was very layered,” says Condor, in a Zoom interview with Postmedia alongside Forte. “We came in very confused and angry and thinking ‘well maybe, the film isn’t as great as we thought it was going to be . . . ‘”

“The shoot went great, we had been hearing the post-process was great, they were already testing it and the testing was going great,” adds Forte. “All of a sudden the rug was pulled out.”

“And so then when we watched the film and the credits rolled, there was this mass confusion and anger,” Condor says. “When credits rolled, we were like ‘This is a great movie! How is this possible?'”

After facing significant backlash and negative media coverage, the studio execs changed their minds and allowed an outside distributor to purchase the film. Enter Ketchup Entertainment, an independent film company that picked it up and held another screening prior to its wide release on Friday, Aug. 28.

The feeling was different the second time around.

“That was a great watch because we knew it was going to come out and it’s a great movie,” Condor says.

This strange chapter in the film’s behind-the-scenes story is being seen by some commentators as an indictment of the tone-deaf corporate indifference that seems to have overrun Hollywood studios these days. It is also strangely fitting for the tone of Coyote Vs. Acme, a story about corporate indifference and underdogs who never give up. Further vindication has come from early reviews, which have been largely positive.

“Consistently funny and clever” proclaimed Brian Tallerico of rogerebert.com.

“A cracking comedy that’s easily among the top ‘Looney Tunes’ movies ever,” writes Johnny Oleksinksi in the New York Post.  

“It’s smart, silly, and ultimately inspiring,” says Kristy Puchko of Mashable.com.

Directed by Dave Green and based on a satirical 1990 New Yorker article by Ian Frazier, Coyote vs. Acme blends animation and live-action in the spirit of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Its central plot revolves around Wile E. Coyote’s decision to sue Acme, the massive corporation behind the endless trail of shoddy equipment he has used in his tireless pursuit of the Road Runner. He enlists the sad-eyed and defeated Kevin Avery (Forte) to represent him, an ambulance-chasing lawyer who specializes in getting small, out-of-court settlements from ACME for cartoon characters.

Avery is joined by his idealistic niece, Paige (played by Condor), who possesses unyielding enthusiasm and optimism for the case even though it pits them against a behemoth and heartless corporation fronted by a ruthless lawyer (played by former pro-wrestler Jon Cena.)

The mute Coyote shifts from the antagonist of the Looney Tunes shorts to a somewhat sympathetic character whose steadfast belief in his own genius despite years of failure becomes the endearing centre of the film. What follows is a story about friendship, loyalty and perseverance filled with slapstick humour, heart and appearances by a long line of Looney Tunes favourites. That includes everything from significant roles for Foghorn Leghord and Tweety Bird to savvy bits featuring cameos by Pepe Le Pew, Gossamer and Dr. Lorre.

Like a lot of comedic performers,  Forte has fond memories of watching the Looney Tunes shorts when he was a kid.

“I love the Wile E. and Road Runner things and as a kid I didn’t really dissect them much, I was just glued to the TV watching,” he says. “I stopped watching from awhile once I got older and then watched a couple of the classics before shooting again. I was so surprised how much pleasure I got out of them as an adult. Certainly there was some nostalgia factor, but it’s funny, subversive stuff.”

That said, creating on-screen relationships with animated characters is not an easy task.

“It’s always going to be a challenge emoting in a realistic way to a character that isn’t there,” says Forte, who is probably still best known for his eight-year stint on Saturday Night Live. “Amplify that when it’s with a character that doesn’t speak. It think it’s a real testament to the screenplay that Samy Burch wrote. She laid this template out that we could follow so easily and it usually seemed like you knew what your emotion was supposed to be and Dave Green was so good about edging you along if you were off a bit. The amount of planning that went into this. We didn’t have to work on any of that stuff, we just got in there and did the easy stuff which was to learn our lines and do exactly what they told us to do because they had spent years working on this. It showed, because it was the most efficient shoot.”

The film maintains a subversive edge with its underlying themes of corporate malfeasance and abuse of power while offering a family-friendly David versus Goliath tale that reflects the behind-the-scenes studio drama.

“I’m so happy and filled with joy when i get to watch it now,” says Condor.

“We never thought this day would come and it was so sad because I love this movie so much,” Forte says. “I’m so proud of it. For a while, it just felt like nobody was ever going to see it. When Ketchup bought it, because of how sad we had been, were were as elated as you could get.”

Coyote vs. Acme is in theatres Aug. 28.