Let’s be honest here: We all clicked on this at Roadrunner speed. Coyote vs. Acme, the formerly-vaulted comedy featuring the Looney Tunes and starring John Cena and Will Forte, finally has a trailer to promote its victorious theatrical release on August 28. It’s as delightful and sharp as we’ve heard the movie to be, with excellent swipes at the forces that canceled it nearly three years ago.
On April 22, independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment released the trailer for Coyote vs. Acme. The movie uniquely frames Wile E. Coyote as the underdog protagonist in a legal battle against the Acme Corporation—represented by their lawyer, played by John Cena—for selling faulty and dangerous products. The movie adapts the February 1990 article “Coyote V. Acme,” published in The New Yorker.
On its own merits, the movie promises all the charm you expect from a “live-action” Looney Tunes film, with a throwback energy to Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. It’s got Will Forte, John Cena, and Lana Condor locked in a deadly-serious dispute over barrels of dynamite and falling pianos. (Classic.) The Looney Tunes themselves are a sight to behold, with Porky Pig, Daffy, and Foghorn Leghorn in a hybrid of 2D animation and 3D CGI for shading and depth. In an era of AI monstrosities, smarmy Pixar faces, and whatever you call Kpop Demon Hunters, it’s a joy to see some familiar characters exactly as you remember them.
You can watch the trailer below.
Where Coyote vs. Acme has more bite is in the real hoopla surrounding its years-long delayed release. If you recall, the movie was shelved by a David Zaslav-run Warner Bros. in November 2023 as a tax write-off. (It was the third WB film in a single year to suffer this fate, after Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt.) Despite overwhelmingly positive test screenings, per director Dave Green on X, the studio expressed no confidence that a Looney Tunes movie could compete in the modern theatrical landscape. Suddenly a story about greedy corporations exercising undue might feels heavier, and a bit too real.
Said WB Motion Picture Group in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “With the re-launch of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in June, the studio has shifted its global strategy to focus on theatrical releases … With this new direction, we have made the difficult decision not to move forward with Coyote vs Acme.”
Backlash from the industry, artistic community, and would-be moviegoers was swift. Only days later, Warner Bros. reversed its decision and permitted the filmmakers to shop the movie to competing studios. After bids from Netflix, Paramount, and Amazon in 2024 were rejected, the movie was sold to Ketchup Entertainment in March 2025.
While the movie will finally shine in theaters where it belongs, the trailer nods to lingering bitterness towards Warner Bros. The standard studio cards make room for a joke, making it clear the Acme corporation are WB stand-ins. It could also be a Paramount stand-in, too. As we speak, one of the biggest and potentially most devastating studio mergers in Hollywood history is under regulatory review; if it goes through with the Trump administration, Paramount will swallow WB wholesale. “These companies think they can do whatever they want!” screams Forte in the trailer. That’s practically the rallying cry of this moment.
Of course, most kids won’t get it. (Except maybe the one weird nine-year-old who listens to The Town.) All they’re going to know are classic Looney Tunes antics, which hopefully is enough to keep them away from their parents’ iPads for a clean 90 minutes. Babysitters, rejoice!
It’s a crowded year for movies as blockbusters like Avengers: Doomsday, Dune: Part Three, Disclosure Day, and The Odyssey compete for eyeballs and box-office dollars. But if there’s anything to take away from Looney Tunes vs. Acme, it’s to never count out the underdog. It just might blow up in your face.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com ’
