Go Catch this Looney Tunes Feature Film!
DIRECTED BY DAVE GREEN/2026
I am so, so, so glad to have finally been able to see this film. And yes, it lives up to whatever hype you may’ve heard. Completed in 2023 but shelved by Warner head David Zaslav for a tax write-off before anyone could ever see it, then somehow rescued and released to theaters by valiant little guy distributor Ketchup Entertainment (who previously field tested this strategy with the also WB-abandoned Looney Tunes fully-animated feature The Day the Earth Blew Up– itself a good movie, but not as good as this one), it’s remarkable how the anti-corporate Coyote vs. Acme in a sense has wound up telling its own story. It’s not at all a plight it could’ve known that it would be subjected to even when it reached completion those three or four years ago. Anyone against the status quo of mega-corporations operating immorally without oversight or consequences needs to go see this film. As does anyone who’s ever enjoyed classic Looney Tunes. Ideally, there’s a formidable overlap with both of those groups. In any case, it deserves all the support it can get.
Will Forte is great as the shlubby Albuquerque lawyer out to simply get by and fly under the radar with low-dollar settlements to cartoon characters for injuries from Acme products. (In this world, cartoon characters and humans coexist). His firm, Avery, Jones, and Maltese, is, in our reality, named for two essential creatives of the Roadrunner cartoons, and one animation icon whom they respected. Chuck Jones of course created the characters as a Sisyphusian metaphor that play out repeatedly via slapstick blackout gags. He had rules for the series, stating, for example, that the Coyote can never catch the Roadrunner; the cartoons must always take place in the American Southwest; neither character can ever speak words; and all of Coyote’s equipment and contraptions must always come from the Acme company. Coyote vs. Acme very much honors all of this.
Micheal Maltese, the least known of the three referenced names, (the great animation legend Tex Avery being the third) was Jones’ perferred writer. Maltese suffered from chronic depression, and understood human toil- that grey existential cloud- all too well. That he was able to parlay such knowledge into comedy gold again and again was his great strength amid his curse. Jones, with Maltese, understood that failure is a universal human experience. Not everyone succeeds in life. But at some point, everyone fails. Hence, whether we care to admit it or not, we identify with Coyote, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam. This was a key ingredient to their comedy formula.
Whenever one of these contemporary Looney Tunes I.P.-mining projects comes along, my first reaction is nervous trepidation. These are beloved characters, yes, and recognized the world over, also yes. But they also tend to be very of their time, and rarely make the jump to the here and now unscathed. While Coyote vs. Acme is not at all a perfect execution of this, it is the best of the high-profile live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrids. And I count the now-venerated Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in this. For me, that film has always stood strongest as an achievement of technology and legal wrangling. But as an engaging story that felt true to any cartoon spirit, it’s merely good, not great. Frankly, it functions better as a detective story.
Coyote is in Coyote vs. Acme a lot. Never once did my Looney Tunes-loving protective self think, “That’s not really Wile E. Coyote”. Jones’ Sisyphusian metaphor is laid out overtly in this, but it’s how the screenplay goes about recognizing it that matters most. As a love letter to Albuquerque, the movie could definitely use more Navajo. Like I said, it’s not perfect. But It’s also not a failure. As such, Coyote vs. Acme is worth running out and trying to catch.