COYOTE VS. ACME Will Never See the Light of Day as WB Has Rejected Other Studios' Offers to Buy It
After Warner Bros. scrapped the completed Looney Tunes movie Coyote vs. Acme for no reason, it was reported that it would be shopped around to other studios. Well, The Wrap is reporting that WB has rejected other studios’ offers to purchase the movie, which is insane to me.
Netflix, Amazon, and Paramount all submitted “handsome offers” for the movie, but WB wanted at least $75 million for it and wouldn’t allow any counteroffers. It’s explained that it was a “take it or leave it” situation. “One that the other studios didn’t even know they were entering into.”
The report also notes the studio might be trying to quietly erase the film. “A source close to the movie doesn’t believe Warner Bros. would even announce that they hadn’t found a home for the movie. They would unceremoniously delete it. Never to be seen again.”
So there is a chance that this movie will cease to exist and never see the light of day which is so damn discouraging. On top of that CEO David Zaslav hasn’t even watched the film!
The decision to scrap Coyote vs. Acme was made by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group CEOs and co-chairpersons Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation president Bill Damaschke, and Zaslav. This was done for a $35 million tax write-off.
De Luca and Abdy only watched a “director’s cut” of the movie and Damaschke saw a “first audience preview.”
It’s a shame that Warner Bros. is run by these ridiculous people. It’s explained that Warner Bros. Discovery has a fourth-quarter earnings call scheduled for February 23, 2023. If Warner Bros. hasn’t sold the movie to another distributor by then, the filmmakers behind Coyote vs. Acme believe the film will be dead and “silenced by a movie studio’s balance sheet.”
After Warner Bros. shelved the film the studio received some backlash against that decision, and WB was labeled an “anti-art studio.” Bauza seemed confident at one point that Coyote vs. Acme will find a new home and be released in 2024 and released a photo with a caption that read, "See ya in 2024!!"
Several filmmakers have seen the film and they all had nothing but great things to say about it! You can read their reactions to it here. Actor Paul Scheer said: “Coyote vs. Acme might be the best version of the Looney Tunes on the Big Screen ever. @dgreenmachine & samyburch nailed it. It’s got jokes, it’s got heart and it’s got Will Forte. You can’t miss (also the deep pulls w/ cartoon cameos are A+).“ Chris Miller said: “I saw COYOTE VS ACME and it’s delightful. Funny, charming, good physical comedy timing, with a surprising amount of heart. I hope several studios go after it so the world can see all the good work people did.”
The movie was directed by Dave Green, from a screenplay by Samy Burch and a story by James Gunn, Jeremy Slater and Burch. The story was partially inspired by an article from The New Yorker, which was written by Ian Frazier in 1990, and John Cena stars in the movie as the CEO of Acme.
Will Forte previously talked about how fun it was to make the movie and also shared some details on the story, saying:
"I mean, it was so fun to make this. It came out of this article that I think is decades old. Wiley Coyote is suing the Acme Corporation because of all the different contraptions that have exploded in his face, and stuff like that. And so, I get to play Wile E. Coyote's lawyer, and it's a mixture of animation, and it's like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? style movie. And yeah, John Cena is so great in it. Lana Condor is in it. It was so much fun making it, and these guys who are making it are so smart. Because you’ve got to figure out where this animated character is going to move to. It was amazing to be a part of it. So, I'm excited to see how it turns out because, of course, I'm acting with a tennis ball a lot of times. There's a tennis ball for an eye-line, and it's moving around. So, yeah, I think, I don't know how much more I can say about it, but I've blathered on for a while.”
I don’t know how any filmmaker would want to continue working with WB after these kinds of business practices.