Coyote vs. Acme Tops $100M After Warner Bros. Shelved It

Wile E. Coyote is famous for plans that backfire. The movie built around him just worked out anyway. Coyote vs. Acme has crossed $100 million at the worldwide box office, according to TheWrap and other outlets, nearly three years after Warner Bros. decided the finished film was worth more as a tax deduction than as a theatrical release.

The live-action and animation hybrid wrapped shooting in 2022. Dave Green directed Coyote vs. Acme, and the cast includes Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor. The story follows the Coyote as he hires a personal injury lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation over its famously defective products. The premise comes from a 1990 short story by Ian Frazier published in The New Yorker.

From write-off to second life

In November 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would shelve the completed film for a tax benefit reported at about thirty million dollars. It joined Batgirl and the animated Scoob! Holiday Haunt in the studio's shelf of finished movies it had decided not to release.

The response was loud. Filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller said publicly that the film was good, and test screenings had scored well. Producer Chris DeFaria told Cartoon Brew the goal was to make sure "it wasn't being shelved because it was a bad movie." Warner Bros. backed off the write-off and shopped the film to other distributors instead.

Ketchup Entertainment closed the deal in 2025. The small distributor had already rescued The Day the Earth Blew Up, the fully animated Looney Tunes feature Warner Bros. had also decided against releasing. Two Looney Tunes films, both abandoned by the studio that owns the characters, both released by an outside buyer.

The campaign sold the backstory

Rather than hiding the film's strange history, the marketing leaned on it. Ketchup brought in the publicity firm 42West and Maximum Effort, the marketing company connected to Ryan Reynolds, after a Comic-Con panel in July 2025 where the release date was announced. The pitch became a single line: the movie ACME didn't want you to see.

"They saw the opportunity to lean into Wile E. Coyote as the ultimate David taking on Goliath, while tapping into the existing fan base and the broader cultural conversation in smart, unexpected ways," Gareth West, chief executive of Ketchup Entertainment, told Startefacts. The premiere ran on the same logic. It was held at the Directors Village in Westwood, where the Coyote walked the red carpet and led the UCLA marching band into the auditorium. Director Dave Green said the audience had spoken up loudly for the Coyote, and that the team was grateful for the support.

The numbers behind the comeback

The film opened on August 28 through Ketchup Entertainment. After a fourth weekend of $10.6 million, its domestic total sat at $54.8 million through Sunday, per Cartoon Brew. Coyote vs. Acme has already out-grossed five Warner Bros. releases from this year: Lee Cronin's The Mummy, Practical Magic 2, Evil Dead Burn, The Bride! and They Will Kill You, according to World of Reel. It also passed Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars and sits within reach of Amazon MGM's Masters of the Universe.

TheWrap also reports the film contains enough animation to qualify for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, which requires animation to make up at least seventy-five percent of a film's running time. A nomination is not guaranteed, but the film is now eligible for the category.

Where to watch it

The next stop is digital. Pre-orders are open on Prime Video and Apple TV at $24.99, and the film releases at 12 midnight EDT on September 29, Collider reports. That lands the film on home screens barely a month after its August 28 theatrical debut, a fast turnaround for a movie that once had no release date at all. Physical media and streaming debuts are expected to follow in the coming months, according to TheWrap, while the film remains in the box office top five. The comeback is the latest in a run of entertainment upsets covered in movies, and Ketchup's grassroots campaign has already been held up as a case study for how small distributors can outmaneuver the majors, alongside other digital-first hits documented in recent streaming coverage.