COYOTE VS. ACME Director Talks About the Challenge of Making a Modern Looney Tunes Movie With Classic Characters
Coyote Vs. Acme is finally being released this week, and after the long wait, fans are excited to see the movie that early reviews have raved about.
The characters in the film are favorites to fans of all ages, as many have been around for almost a hundred years. That’s a great asset for a filmmaker, but it can also be daunting.
The film’s director, Dave Green, talked about finding the right balance for his story in a recent interview with GamesRadar, where he explained:
"That is part of the challenge and the hope and the responsibility we have: it's updating these characters for modern audiences while keeping their essences true to who those characters have always been.
“Myself and my team were really... our preference was really to not put too much of a heavy modern spin on these characters and really to honor who they are, who they've been, and not try to change them. They're on a rental system.
“Like Eric Bauza, the voiceover artist who does so many voices in this movie, he always says when he's doing one of these great voices that Mel Blanc originated: 'We're just, you know, borrowing the keys to the Cadillac, and I promise to never give it a scratch and return it washed and with more gas in the tank."
Green went on in the interview to add, "And that's really what we're doing here. We're trying to protect legacies that are so much older than us and treat them right, but also have a lot of fun with these characters and have fun with this sandbox that we've been lucky to play in."
The upcoming live-action/computer-animated hybrid comedy is based on the 1990 non-fiction New Yorker story of the same name by Ian Frazier, which sees a fed-up Wile E. Coyote decide to sue the ACME corporation after years and years of failing to capture the Roadrunner.
The movie sees Wile team up with a reluctant lawyer named Kevin Avery (Will Forte) in order to bring them down... and the two end up uncovering a much darker secret in the process. Green directs from a screenplay penned by Samy Burch.
Coyote vs. Acme hits theaters on August 28, 2026. Are you looking forward to checking it out?