The first full trailer for “Coyote vs. Acme” hit the internet this morning, more than two years after Warner Bros. tried to bury the finished film for a roughly $30 million tax write-off. It arrived with a tagline built around that history: “The Film Acme Didn’t Want You to See.”
Ketchup Entertainment, which bought the movie from Warner Bros. in March 2025, is running the release. The studio is leaning all the way into the backstory. The footage opens with Wile E. Coyote watching a late-night TV ad for billboard accident lawyer Kevin Avery, played by Will Forte, who pitches viewers who have “suffered Acme damages.” Coyote, still silent after all these decades, decides to sue.
John Cena plays Buddy Crane, Acme’s slick corporate attorney and, as the story goes, Avery’s former boss. Lana Condor rounds out the top of the cast as Avery’s niece Paige. Longtime Looney Tunes voice actor Eric Bauza handles Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and the rest of the classic roster. Sylvester, Tweety and Foghorn Leghorn turn up too.
Here’s the quick version of how this movie got here. Warner Bros. greenlit it in December 2020 as an HBO Max project. Live-action filming wrapped in New Mexico by May 2022. In November 2023, under CEO David Zaslav, the studio announced the completed film wouldn’t be released at all, making it the third scrapped title after “Batgirl” and “Scoob! Holiday Haunt.” Backlash was loud. Crew members were blindsided. Forte went public with what he called “white hot anger.”
After Warner Bros. reversed course and let the filmmakers shop it, talks with Netflix and Paramount reportedly fell apart. Ketchup, which had already picked up “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie,” swooped in and bought worldwide rights for a reported $50 million.
The trailer itself is a direct shot at that whole saga. The branding. The tagline. Every beat of the marketing so far has quietly needled the studio that tried to erase the movie, right down to an earlier tax day teaser that told fans to “check your write-offs.”
The creative lineup is stronger than a standard Looney Tunes revival. Director Dave Green, who made “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” first signed on in late 2019. The screenplay is from Samy Burch, who earned an Oscar nomination for “May December.” Burch shares story credit with James Gunn, now co-CEO of DC Studios, and Jeremy Slater of “Moon Knight.” The project adapts Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker humor piece “Coyote v. Acme,” a single-page legal brief filed on the Coyote’s behalf against the Acme company.
P.J. Byrne, Martha Kelly, Tone Bell and Luis Guzmán fill out the human side of the cast. Guzmán plays the judge. Forte told The Hollywood Reporter last year that he’d “promote the crap out of” the film once it found a home, offering to go “to the top of Mount Everest” if asked.
Ketchup has booked “Coyote vs. Acme” for a wide theatrical release on August 28. That weekend puts it directly against Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” with “Insidious: Out of the Further” opening the week before. Tough company for a hybrid comedy that wasn’t supposed to exist at all.
Watch the trailer below.
