With Road Runner-like speed, Warner Bros. Discovery has reversed its decision to bury Coyote vs. Acme.
The studio will now allow director Dave Green to sell his live-action/animation hybrid film to other potential buyers rather than put the project on hold because of a tax write-off, has confirmed. Amazon is considered a competitor in the mix, with screenings for potential buyers taking place this month. Puck was the first to announce the news of the reversal.
The move comes days after broke the news that “Coyote vs. Acme” would be Warner’s third already-made film to be canceled, following the previous cancellation of the nearly completed projects “Batgirl” and “Scoob”! Holiday meeting in August 2022.
After Batgirl and Scoob! After being dumped, a group of filmmakers who had business at the studio formed a text chain – a kind of support group – to share their hopes and fears and receive encouragement and tips for navigating the studio. The only question they all had: What was going on with their films?
The cancellation of “Coyote” shocked the creative community perhaps even more than “Batgirl” and “Scoob!”, as they were positioned as a one-off change in strategy that would never happen again. According to sources, after the Coyote vs. Acme news broke last week, several filmmakers instructed their representatives to cancel planned meetings with Warners. But now that Coyote may finally find a new home, these filmmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach.
Unlike the other films canceled by Warners, Coyote vs. Acme was fully completed and tested multiple times throughout the ’90s. (Best Picture winner Argo, both Deadpool films and the first The Conjuring are among the features also tested in the ’90s.) According to sources who have seen the film – which stars Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor stars – Coyote vs. Acme is a popcorn-style crowd-pleaser.
“Coyote vs. Acme is a great movie,” tweeted writer-director BenDavid Grabinski, who worked with Green on “Happily.” “Best of its kind since then.” [Who Framed] Roger Rabbit… The main characters are super likeable. It’s beautifully shot. The animation is great. The ending makes everyone cry. I thought the goal of this business was to make hit films?”
After Batgirl was shelved, the narrative emerged that the film was canceled because it wasn’t very good. “Our job is to protect the DC brand and we will do that,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO Zaslav said during the 2022 investor call days after the cancellation. Peter Safran, who became head of DC Studios after the cancellation of “Batgirl,” said in a press statement in January that the team behind the film was talented but that “Batgirl” was “unreleaseable.”
Green’s industry friends have mobilized to prevent this type of news from damaging Coyote vs. Acme’s reputation. According to sources, a “funeral screening” is still planned at the Warners lot this week, although “funeral” is no longer an appropriate term for a project that could well find new life.
“I don’t know how you watch the movie and then say, ‘That couldn’t have happened to me,'” says Brian Duffield, the filmmaker behind the Hulu sleeper film “No One Will Save You.” Duffield was not involved in Coyote vs. Acme, but is friends with Green and took notes on the film.
Part of Duffield’s frustration, he says, was that Green did everything asked of him: He delivered the film, which sources say cost $72 million, on budget. He got the right test results. He even moved away from his friends and family to London for 18 months to save the studio money on post-production. All this just to watch his film fall off a cliff.
Duffield believes Coyote can make money – certainly more than the tax write-off.
“I think Coyote is very similar to Barbie in a lot of ways,” says Duffield. “They play with iconography in a really fun way.”
Experienced film executives acknowledge that shelving a film for a tax write-off – and to avoid distribution and marketing costs – can make a profit quarter look better, but for a studio concerned with building franchises and a plan , it may be short-sighted.
The decision followed the industry making a hard turnaround from a golden age of streaming boom in which studios spent unprecedented billions on content, particularly titles associated with a well-known IP like Coyote vs. Acme. Some saw Warners’ recklessness less as a new way of mistreating talent than as a return to what Hollywood used to be.
“The idea that there was a small window where a lot of people could try a lot of things that they wouldn’t have been able to try under normal circumstances, that’s the anomaly,” said a top writer and producer. “The kind of red tooth and claw version of [conducting business]the meanness – I think that’s the norm.”
Still, it’s easy to imagine that if an in-demand creative has the choice under any circumstances to move to Warners or another studio in the future, Zaslav’s aggressive control strategies could cause real hesitation – even with the U-turn. Previously, Zaslav reversed an unpopular decision – gutting TCM – after an outcry from creatives such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Interestingly, the plot of Coyote vs. Acme follows the speechless, ever-determined Wile E. Coyote as he teams up with a lawyer (Forte) to fight against the big ACME corporation. Just like in the cartoons, Coyote buys ACME devices to kill Road Runner, but they never work properly and often explode suddenly. In other words, the third canceled Warners film is the story of an underdog taking on a heartless company whose executives don’t realize that blowing up their products can have real consequences.
—Pamela McClintock contributed to this story.