If the first half of 2025 has been an emotional rollercoaster for animation fans, the infamous drama behind Warner Bros.’ Coyote V. Acme is like a loop, swinging them in every direction. The movie has been on a perilous journey, and it hasn’t even graced theaters yet: from concept to production to completion, being stuck in limbo and nearly never seeing the light of day, up until its eventual revival. Through this journey, nobody faced as much hardship surrounding it as the film’s crew, putting their everything into creating something they truly adored. Trapped in the cold, unrelenting fist of Warner Bros., the project’s only hope was their unwavering passion and determination. This is how Coyote V. Acme clawed its way from cancellation to salvation, shining a beacon of hope for the modern animation industry.

The movie’s premise stemmed from an article of the same name, published by The New Yorker in 1990. This article explores the hypothetical of if Wile E. Coyote had sued Acme, the fictional company producing the gadgets used to pursue the Roadrunner, which failed him countless times. It proved to be a hit, garnering praise for its creativity. Production for a film based on the concept began in 2018, with a screenplay being finished shortly after. A legal drama-comedy combining live-action and 3D animation, the film looked to be a unique venture for Warner Bros., even more so for a Looney Tunes spin-off.

However, in the final stretch of its production, disaster struck. The merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery left the studio feeling directionless, paving the way for CEO David Zaslav to lead them in some…questionable endeavors. Beloved series were inexplicably removed from their streaming service, ongoing projects were being cancelled left and right. Various films in complete or near-complete states were sacrificed for tax write-offs; a generous sum of money that goes towards the studio, in exchange for permanently erasing a project. Some infamous examples of this were Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt. While this in itself wasn’t a good sign for Coyote V. Acme, the biggest red flag was which sector of the studio Zaslav was going after: animation. By shutting down their smaller animation studios and decreasing their animation lineup, he was doing all he could to shift focus away from that department. His next target, sure enough, was Coyote V. Acme.

In November 2023, the movie was shelved and sentenced to become a tax write-off. By this time, it was already inches away from completion and awaiting a marketing campaign. Small-scale test screenings of the film reaped overwhelmingly positive feedback, but it wasn’t enough to reverse their decision. News of this made its way online, as expected, and to say fans weren’t pleased would be an understatement. A wave of videos criticizing Warner Bros. Discovery surged across the Internet, garnering hundreds of thousands of views in total. Paragraphs and short-form content on social media sites expressing these feelings turned to entire video essays discussing not just the fate of Coyote V. Acme, but with it, the fate of Warner Bros. Discovery. The outrage surpassed niche online groups and spread across the animation community, making hashtags like #CoyoteVAcme and #SaveCoyoteVAcme trend on X. It was when the crew behind it spoke up that they knew something must be done.

As accustomed with Warner Bros. Discovery, the production team wasn’t given the full story when the project was first shelved, getting their information the same way everyone else did: social media announcements. From editors to animators, crew members took to sites like X to express their disappointment. The vast majority of them gushed about how phenomenal the film really was, along with the amount of dedication it took to bring it to life. Will Forte in particular made a personal, heartfelt post on his experience working on the movie, furthering the cause: “When I first heard that our movie was getting ‘deleted’, I hadn’t seen it yet. So I was thinking what everyone else must have been thinking: this [movie] must be a hunk of junk. But then I saw it. And it’s incredible”. 

At first, the studio was unpersuaded. It wasn’t a secret that CEO Zaslav had a strategy, and thought little about what projects had to be thrown into the fire to sustain the sickly, smoking engine Warner Bros. Discovery had become under his charge. As they stayed quiet, the uproar grew louder; more voices joined in to weigh in on issues within the animation industry that had gone widely unheard just a year prior. After months of discourse, when the backlash was near deafening, Zaslav caved…sort of.

Not even a month later, in November 2023, the studio announced that they would put the film on the market for different distributors. Many fans still weren’t satisfied, as this made it clear that Warner Bros. Discovery wanted little to do with the film, even after so many fought for its revival. But it was undoubtedly better than cancellation. For a while, this was Coyote V. Acme’s fate: locked in purgatory, unable to be released or seen by the public. Some worried that this was just a more long-winded way of killing the project, in the case that no distribution company wanted their name on it. However, this wasn’t the case. As various bids came through, only to all be rejected by Warner Bros. Discovery, hope was fading fast. In a moment of darkness for the animation community, an unlikely savior arose: Ketchup Entertainment. The studio behind The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Toons Movie, another almost-victim of Zaslav’s animation massacre the previous year. In an unbelievable turn of events, the movie had cheated death thanks to an unexpected yet fitting distributor. At last, Coyote V. Acme was saved.

The story behind Coyote V. Acme is one that has elated not just animation fans, but fans of cinema in general. To see it practically given a death sentence, only to be revived as a result of their efforts, was groundbreaking. Whether out of the goodness of their hearts or fear of public backlash, Warner Bros. Discovery listened and reversed their decision. For a plot centered around an underdog wronged by a flawed system finally getting justice, the real-life journey to have that story be told proved to be just as epic. It offers hope that industry higher-ups will realize the tired method of “scrap films, collect paychecks, become richer without producing quality” isn’t a sustainable business model. Though Ketchup Entertainment’s The Day The Earth Blew Up didn’t live up to box office standards, moviegoers have high hopes for their next Looney Toons installment, and for good reason. The movie is set to release in 2026.