Wile E. Coyote finally gets his day in court — literally — when Coyote vs. ACME hits theaters August 28.
The story so far (and it's a real story)
After decades of every ACME product backfiring on him in his pursuit of the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote hires down-and-out billboard lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte) to sue the ACME Corporation for its faulty, catastrophic products. The case pits them against ACME's slick corporate counsel, Buddy Crane (played by John Cena). Lana Condor also stars. The film is a live-action/animation hybrid from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, directed by Dave Green, with a story credited to James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, and Samy Burch — based loosely on Ian Frazier's real 1990 New Yorker humor piece of the same name.
The film almost didn't happen
This one has a genuinely unusual road to theaters. Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the completed film back in November 2023 for a tax write-down, following the same fate as several other finished-but-cancelled projects. Public backlash followed, and Ketchup Entertainment (the studio that rescued The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie) acquired distribution rights in March 2025. The film got its first public footage at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, and now, nearly three years after it was completed, it's actually reaching audiences.
Why it's worth a shelf mention
For a comic and collectibles shop, this is a good excuse to spotlight Looney Tunes back-catalog material — the classic Chuck Jones-era Coyote/Road Runner shorts have a long comic and collectibles history alongside the cartoons themselves, and "the movie Warner tried to bury" makes for a genuinely interesting talking point at the counter.
Details sourced from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Ketchup Entertainment's official press coverage, and Variety/Deadline reporting on the film's distribution history.