COYOTE VS. ACME Composers Slams Warner Bros. for Scrapping Film, Calls Them "Anti-Art Studio"
Last week we learned that Warner Bros. had scrapped another one of its completed projects with the Looney Tunes film Coyote Vs. Acme. It was a strange move that doesn’t seem to make sense as those people who have seen it have said that it’s a really good movie.
The movie completed production last year with director Dave Green. It starred John Cena and DC Studios co-head James Gunn produced the feature and worked on the story. Cena was set to star as the president of the ACME Corporation and other cast members included Will Forte (SNL, MacGruber) and Lana Condor (To All the Boys, Alita: Battle Angel).
Now, the film’s composer, Steven Price, who won the Oscar for Best Original Score for Gravity, has come out to slam the studio and CEO David Zaslav’s cost-cutting administration, and called them an “anti-art studio.” He said:
“Had a lot of fun scoring Coyote Vs Acme. As no-one will be able to hear it now, due to bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans I will never understand, here is a bit of behind the scenes footage of our “Meep Meep” Roadrunner choir, with apologies to Tchaikovsky…”
You can watch the clip he shared in the X below:
Price also added: “Animation totally complete and looked great. Whole film mixed and finished….” as well as “This is a weird one, for sure! Good film, scrubbed from existence… .”
The director of the film also took to X to share his thoughts on the film and the outcome of it saying:
“For three years, I was lucky enough to make a movie about Wile E. Coyote, the most persistent, passionate, and resilient character of all time. I was surrounded by a brilliant team, who poured their souls into this project for years.”
He went on to talk about the test audiences that saw the movie saying: “We were embraced by test audiences who rewarded us with fantastic scores…and beyond devastated by WB’s decision.”
UK composer Daniel Pemberton who has worked on scores for films such as Ocean’s Eight, Bird’s of Prey and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also lashed out at the Studio, saying:
“This behaviour is not only terrible but any half decent creative is gonna think twice signing up huge chunks of their life to throw everything they have at a project from studios that seem pretty cavalier about ever letting that work get seen… WB playing a terrible long game.”
He makes a really good point. Why spend years of your life developing something that the studio is just going to throw out!? If it can happen to a movie like Coyote Vs. Acme, which was proven to be a good movie that people enjoyed watching, it could happen to any movie! WB is very much still a crazy studio making ridiculous decisions.