Coyote Vs. Acme

There’s something almost indecently fitting about the fact that the movie Coyote vs. Acme had to survive its own impossible ordeal before reaching audiences. Dave Green’s film takes a character whose life is marked by crashes, explosions, falls off cliffs, and betrayals caused by faulty machinery, and places him at the heart of a story about refusing to disappear. Outside the film, the parallel has become irresistible: completed years earlier and sadly shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery, the film finally escaped corporate oblivion when Ketchup Entertainment acquired it. This strange backstory inevitably accompanies Coyote vs. Acme to the big screen, but the pleasant surprise is that the film doesn’t need its rescue story to justify its existence. It’s genuinely funny, beautifully rooted in the Looney Tunes legacy, and far more insightful about failure, consumerism, and the power of big corporations than anyone might have expected from a comedy whose protagonist has spent decades ordering dynamite by mail.

This wonderfully absurd premise is inspired by an article by Ian Frazier published in 1990 in The New Yorker, in which he imagined Wile E. Coyote filing a lawsuit against the manufacturer responsible for his endless collection of defective gadgets. Here, after years of using rockets, magnets, explosives, and other Acme products of catastrophically poor reliability, this perpetually unlucky predator finally convinces himself that he may not be entirely responsible for his misfortunes. That’s where Kevin Avery comes in—a down-on-his-luck personal injury lawyer, played by Will Forte, who usually makes a living by securing meager settlements for cartoon characters accustomed to suffering spectacular but temporary injuries. At first, Kevin sees Wile E.’s claim as just another chance to secure a cheap out-of-court settlement, while his idealistic niece and intern, Paige—played by Lana Condor—senses that this is a case of much greater significance. Very quickly, their case catches the attention of Acme’s formidable lawyer, Buddy Crane, played by John Cena with a massive jaw, increasingly ridiculous bolo ties, and exactly the kind of confidence you’d expect from a man who has never seriously considered the possibility that he might be wrong.

What Samy Burch—drawing on a screenplay she co-wrote with James Gunn and Jeremy Slater—understands perfectly is that Wile E. Coyote has always been more interesting than the Road Runner. The bird essentially embodies perfection in motion; Wile E., on the other hand, represents an aspiration that constantly clashes with reality. His failures are funny because they’re inevitable, but also because he gets back up from every crater and tries again. Coyote vs. Acme transforms this repetition into something surprisingly poignant, without ever attempting to rehabilitate him as a conventional, likable hero. He still wants to eat the Road Runner. He remains obsessive, manipulative, and catastrophically overconfident. Yet behind those enormous yellow eyes lies a creature who has built his identity around an unattainable goal. One of the film’s most ingenious ideas is therefore philosophical rather than nostalgic: if Wile E. were to one day stop chasing the Road Runner, who exactly would he become? The mysterious Sisyphus Project makes this reference explicit, but the film wisely lets the comedy carry the philosophy rather than overwhelming the audience with it.

Will Forte turns out to be an inspired human counterpart to this existential disaster. He doesn’t try to compete with the animation, and this restraint becomes one of the film’s secret weapons. Kevin accepts the cartoon characters as an integral part of everyday life in Albuquerque, which allows the film to avoid wasting time showing humans staring in disbelief every time a two-dimensional character walks into a room. His jaded normality makes the madness surrounding him all the funnier. John Cena, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach and practically transforms into a Looney Tunes character: Buddy Crane is pompous, physically imposing, and magnificently full of himself. Lana Condor brings the necessary sincerity to the character of Paige, even though the script gives her less depth than it does to Kevin, and some of the secondary human characters inevitably seem a bit flat when compared to nearly a century of animated personalities. For his part, Eric Bauza accomplishes the formidable task of lending his voice to numerous familiar characters while honoring rather than merely imitating the legacy of Mel Blanc.

From a technical standpoint, the illusion is remarkably convincing. Dave Green understands that the combination of live-action and animation is not so much about showcasing digital technology as it is about establishing believable physical interactions between characters who never shared the same space during production. The actors had an unusual scene partner on set: veteran puppeteer Dave Barclay manipulated a life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet, equipped with movable arms, eyebrows, and simple facial expressions, providing the actors with real visual and physical cues. This hands-on preparation pays off consistently. The characters seem to inhabit the offices, courtrooms, and desert landscapes rather than floating above them, while Brandon Trost’s cinematography lends the human environments enough texture to make the animated intrusions seem delightfully disruptive. The filmmakers also blend traditional 2D work with 3D animation rather than imposing a single, sleek digital aesthetic on the Looney Tunes. But above all, the physical comedy retains all its impact: rockets accelerate, anvils crash down, bodies stretch, faces contort, and gravity waits patiently for Wile E. to realize there’s no longer any ground beneath his feet.

The satire isn't exactly subtle, but subtlety has never been a prerequisite for bringing an anvil down on someone's head. Acme, once a mysterious supplier of impossible gadgets, has become a massive corporation whose reach extends to virtually every corner of society, and the screenplay has a lot of fun portraying cartoon characters as particularly useful consumers: endlessly exploitable customers who can be crushed, burned, and blown up before they spring back to their original shapes. There is, of course, a critique of monopolies, planned obsolescence, and companies that treat their customers as mere data, but the joke took on a much sharper edge after the film itself was deemed commercially disposable. This coincidence could easily have weighed the film down; on the contrary, it lends the legal battle an unexpected extra layer of intensity. The fictional underdog character suing the company that considers him disposable didn’t hit theaters until after the film about him had itself survived a nearly identical fate. Even Acme would have had a hard time crafting such effective irony.

Not everything always runs with Road Runner-like precision. The conspiracy plots sometimes become more convoluted than necessary, and the legal thriller structure repeats information when another burst of Looney Tunes-style chaos might have been more welcome. Young viewers may enjoy the physical comedy while wondering why so much attention is paid to corporate liability and legal strategies, whereas adults who grew up with these characters will likely get much more out of the references. And comparisons to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are inevitable but somewhat unfair: Robert Zemeckis’s 1988 film remains a darker and more formally daring fusion of film noir and animation. Coyote vs. Acme aims for something warmer and deliberately less menacing. Its merit lies not in surpassing that iconic film, but in understanding why these characters endure and refusing to modernize them by stripping away their eccentricities. The cameos largely feel like inhabitants of this universe rather than intellectual property elements parading across the screen.

Against all odds, Coyote vs. Acme ends up being something rarer than just a franchise reboot: a movie that shows genuine affection for the characters it has inherited and offers a real reason to bring them back. Dave Green and Samy Burch understood that what made Wile E. Coyote so funny wasn’t simply his failures, but the fact that those failures never deterred him from keeping on trying. Beyond the explosions, the theatrical courtroom scenes, and the magnificently orchestrated silliness, the film presents a strangely moving plea for perseverance, without compromising the character’s inherent madness. Its own journey—from completed production to falling victim to the vagaries of the industry, and finally to its theatrical release—further reinforces the resonance of this idea, but the film earns this sentiment on its own merits. Wile E. will probably never catch the Road Runner, Acme will probably never make rocket skates that work properly, and tomorrow, another rock will almost certainly land on someone’s head. The important thing is that once the dust settles, the Coyote gets back up. After everything this film has been through, seeing him get back up has never been more satisfying.

Coyote vs. Acme
Directed by Dave Green
Written by Samy Burch
Story by James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, Samy Burch
Based on Coyote v. Acme by Ian Frazier
Produced by Chris DeFaria, James Gunn
Starring Will Forte, Lana Condor, Tone Bell, Luis Guzmán, Martha Kelly, P. J. Byrne, Eric Bauza, Kenneth Choi, John Cena
Cinematography : Brandon Trost
Edited by Carsten Kurpanek
Music by Steven Price
Production companies : Warner Animation Group, Troll Court Entertainment, Keylight Pictures
Distributed by Ketchup Entertainment (United States), 
Release dates : July 25, 2026 (San Diego Comic-Con), August 28, 2026 (United States)
Running time : 103 minutes

Viewed on August 31, 2026