From tax write off to 16 million in its opening weekend at the box office, Coyote vs. Acme, the latest film by director Dave Green that Warner Bros. didn't want you to see is in theaters now. Aftermath's resident Looney Tunes sickos, Gita, Chris, and Isaiah saw it and are here to chat about the movie's triumphant release three years after it was shelved.
This post contains spoilers for Coyote vs. Acme.
Isaiah: Hey hey Gita and Chris. I saw Coyote vs. Acme a bit earlier than you for interview and review purposes. But the moment I did, I knew we had to get y'all's thoughts on it. I guess to start, walking out of the movie, knowing the long road it took to getting here, did it live up to your expectations?
Chris: I think that I mostly got what I wanted out of it. I tried not to let the situation broadly influence what I thought of it and tried to judge it on its own merits but a "small town lawyer takes on the big companies" legal thriller but it's Looney Toons is what I wanted and it delivered on that front. I don't think it's Roger Rabbit but Roger Rabbit is also a perfect movie even outside of the format.
I think if the bar is "movie where cartoons talk to people and everyone acts like that's normal" it's on par or better than Back In Action (minus that one Walmart gag) and an objectively better movie than Space Jam but Space Jam is less about being good and more about being Space Jam.
Gita: It did CONSTANTLY make me want to watch Roger Rabbit though. Usually when I am thinking about another movie while I'm watching a movie, that's not a great sign. But here I just felt this sense of joy that I knew I could only really replicate with one other, singular film.
It's rare that a movie makes me actually laugh out loud, but this one got me A LOT.
Chris: The jokes that really got me were not the Looney Tunes jokes but the oblique ones like the sign about how great Albuquerque is.
Isaiah: Congrats to Bugs for finally making it there, by the way.
The joke that got me real early was its opening text saying it was based on a true story. In tandem with the movie's advertisements taking jabs at the reality of it hitting theaters with a side of Ketchup (Entertainment), that was a good bit to get the meta humor of it all out of the way and lean more on what the film is trying to do. Which is tackle a corporate conglomerate meant to bully the little guy into submission. I wrote it in my review, but conceptually, Coyote vs. Acme is the most universal shower thought of a film. We've seen Wile E. Coyote for YEARS have his plans to catch Road Runner blow up in his face thanks to Acme products. A film where he sues them just makes sense!
Gita: Honestly, my favorite gag might have been "it's a limited number of signs."
Chris: That one is really good. Yeah you kinda can't escape the context sometimes but the jokes that really work are like, Will Forte getting mad and storming in to Coyote waiting while he's reading a book called "How To Wait Dramatically".
Isaiah: The Pepé Le Pew "predator spray" bit was real good, too.
While the movie didn't push the envelope as far as I wanted it to with its interrogation of corporate oligarchs, the movie having Foghorn Leghorn basically act as a class traitor by selling the toons out throughout the film as an Acme suit was pretty inspired.
Going so far as to hurt himself in court to dehumanize toons to as characters who don't feel pain was the kind of lean forward in your chair inducing sociopolitics I wasn't expecting the film to feature.
Daffy Duck needed a scene where he took his fellow feathered brethren to task for selling out. Tweety Bird deserved getting choked out by John Cena for that.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The movie proper sees Wile E. Coyote seek out personal injury lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte) to sue Acme for years of selling faulty products to him. Avery isn't exactly a star lawyer. His whole deal is he tends to settle than go after as big a fish as Acme, whose hands are in virtually every piece of entertainment and consumer product in the world and have John Cena putting the smackdown on prosecutors in the court of law. But the duo, in tow with Avery's niece played by Lana Condor, stumble into a conspiracy tied to Acme that could lead to a discovery to turn the tide in their favor. Along the way, we get tons of Muppet-style Looney Tunes cameos and meep meeps from Road Runner.
Side-bar: Apparently there was some contention over whether Road Runner goes "meep meep" or "beep beep." We can't be friends if you think he says "beep beep."
Gita: He says meep meep, obviously.
It is difficult, given the structure of the film, not to dwell on the fact that it was shelved as a tax write off and then finally released years later. But what struck me especially is that you can see WHY the people who made this film fought so hard for it. In the right circumstances, this could have and should have been a huge, family friendly hit summer film. This should have had toy tie-ins with a fast food joint, billboards all over Los Angeles, schmaltzy commercials every break. It's a well made, deeply funny movie that pays a deep respect to the Looney Tunes in a way that Warner Brothers currently seems uninterested in doing.
Chris P: I think it's sorta connected to this lack of confidence that Looney Tunes can ever be salable again, like it's status as IP, and that's fucking nuts to me. Just because they have been bad stewards of it does not mean it's culturally gargantuan. I've seen too many bespoke Bugs Bunny leather jackets and bootleg tweety bird shirts to know better.
Isaiah: The fact that we live in a world where Warner Bros. has HBO Max to watch their shit, but nearly 800 Looney Tunes cartoons are streaming on Tubi blows my mind. Its tantamount to Paramount's treatment of the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise in that it prints money on its own but the rights owner seems to resent that.
Chris P: Will Forte really is perfectly cast in this movie as the bumbling lawyer trying to regain his dignity
Like, if you asked me for a list of actors who could convince me that they have personally met Bugs Bunny, he's at the top of the list even before this.
There's also a fantastic deep cut where he's meeting the Coyote that's a direct reference to the weird era when Wile E. Coyote talked with a mid Atlantic accent and had an inconsistent pronunciation.
There’s a deep cut reference in there where Will Forte says “Mr. Coyote? Or Coyoté?” that’s specifically referencing that weird era when he talked.
— Chris Person (@papapishu.bsky.social) August 30, 2026 at 10:22 PM
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Isaiah: That's such a deep cut. Forte was born to play opposite a Looney Tunes character. And I think Cena is cementing his place as a former wrestler gone Hollywood with great comedic chops. Though, that should come as no surprise since James Gunn has been showing us that in Peacemaker and as one of the three writers of Coyote vs. Acme. I also found Lana Condor to be a real underappreciated anchor for the film's "humans interacting with Tunes" cast. She felt pretty natural as the hopeful spark keeping the gang together.
Chris P: Same, I also really appreciate the Martha Kelly cameo renaissance we are currently living through. Do you need someone to show up and say a line in a brutally deadpan way, get Martha.
Also very funny that this movie was written by the screenwriter of May December.
Gita: Wait Chris, I had no idea about that, that's hilarious.
Chris: Thankfully those themes are not shared in this picture about cartoons.
Gita: What I appreciated about this script was that it had a real economy--it's not trying to be the biggest, best movie in the world, the most spectacular, but instead just A Really Good Looney Tunes Movie, which is enough.
The Looney Tunes as cartoons are sometimes these real visual flexes or are sumptuous, really long and weird bits. But mostly, they're just bare bones, basic comedy at its most vital, often even without any dialogue at all. The Day The Earth Blew Up was also a great tribute to the kind of comedy you can only really get in cartoons, but this movie had the ability to make you stop and appreciate a simple gag.
Isaiah: I will say though, as a film sequentially released after The Day The Earth Blew Up, I couldn't help but wish the film was a 2D animated spectacle. That's not to say the bits didn't hit in its hybrid 3D animation, but the kid in me would've loved to see all the slapstick hit with the kineticism of 2D animation. It's my one molehill of a gripe with the otherwise good-ass capital O original Looney Tunes film.
Chris: Doing real 2D animation is quite difficult with people, if you've ever seen the behind the scenes for Roger Rabbit it's mind bending how they pulled that off. I understand why they went this route but there's just some instances where the characters looked a little too computer generated and off model, a little too slick. I think we've been spoiled by Guilty Gear and Dorohedoro.
They needed to do a second pass on Fudd.
But mostly I do enjoy this weird pseudo 3D reality it exists in. Roger Rabbit posits the existence of Toon Town as this other space that the Toons are put in but Cartoons just kinda live in the real world here so it being a little 3D makes coherent sense.
Isaiah: After the movie's Ace Attorney antics, it ends on a surprisingly sentimental note I wasn't expecting the film to go: Road Runner taking the stand in the war against Coyote vs. Acme on the side of Wile E. I've seen folks clue in to the promotional poster's whole Sisyphus metaphor with Wile E.—which the film explicitly spells out—but I've been loving the notion that the film posits where the boulder loved Sisyphus. The film already achieved a herculean task with having its main lead pantomime the entire movie with a limited number of cue cards to bridge the language barrier, but I wasn't expecting to be brought to tears by Road Runner supporting Wile. E. And for the film to be real enough with us by having them still lose. What did you guys think of the ending?
Chris: I got weirdly emotional?
Gita: I yelled out "THEY'RE FRIENDS!"
Chris: They need each other! He can't live without the Road Runner and vice versa. It's sweet.
Isaiah: Wile E. Coyote: fakest IDGAF-er of all time.
That being the only display of Toon comradery depicted in the film inspiring other Tunes to speak out and give Acme a death of a thousand cuts moved me.
Gita: Yeah, I think it's important to the film that ultimately, the big corporation wins out. That happened in real life for this movie, at least for a little while. And while the film is finally in theaters, it's without the marketing push that Warner Brothers would have given it. Still, you have to count your wins when you get them—and for this movie, the best possible win you can get is making a friend.
