They Canceled This Movie. Fans Revolted. Now Coyote vs Acme Is Actually in Theaters

Some movies get bad reviews. This one got canceled while finished.

Coyote vs Acme - the live-action Looney Tunes movie with John Cena and Lana Condor - was axed by Warner Bros. in 2023 despite good test scores and a completed cut. Hollywood’s favorite new hobby: bury your own product and act surprised when the internet loses its mind.

Fans did lose their mind. Directors and actors spoke up. The film went up for sale. Ketchup Entertainment bought worldwide rights for about $50 million and actually released it.

Meep meep, finally

Opening weekend landed around $15.5 million domestically - not Avengers money, but a real theatrical life for a movie that was supposed to die in a vault. Spider-Man: Brand New Day still held No. 1 for a fifth straight weekend. The Odyssey kept cruising in third. Coyote did not need to beat Spidey. It needed to exist. That alone makes this one of the weirdest win stories of the summer.

Budget was roughly $70 million. Hybrid live-action and animation. Dave Green directed. The pitch is simple and perfect: Wile E. Coyote finally gets his movie, and the studio almost made sure you never saw it.

Why people cared

Because it felt personal. Canceling a finished family movie during an era of streaming write-offs hits different than shelving a bad script. Test audiences liked it. Talent liked it. The internet watched a studio treat its own work like a tax loss with fur.

Ketchup’s bet is that curiosity plus nostalgia plus “they tried to stop us from seeing this” equals ticket sales. Early numbers say that math works well enough to matter.

The magazine read

Canceled. Outcry. Sold. Released. $15.5M opening. Spidey still king. Coyote finally runs off a cliff in a real theater instead of a spreadsheet.

Meep meep. Took three years. Worth the wait for the story alone.