08/28/2026
Made in 2022, Coyote Vs ACME was scheduled for release in 2023. The movie was completely finished, “in the can” as they say, and the actors and filmmakers were extremely happy with the movie they had made. Early Audience testing seemed to prove them right. Then Warner Brothers got bought out by a bigger corporation and it’s promising future was cut short. Coyote Vs ACME was “shelved”.
Not an uncommon story in Hollywood but there’s a few twists to this one. For Coyote Vs ACME there was no plan to eventually release it years later, either in theaters, quietly on Cartoon Network, or even one of the many streaming platforms that are now available. It wasn’t because it was a bad movie, with horrible witting, sub-par acting, and unbelievable special effects.
No the corporate execs decided it would be better as a tax write off. Basically meaning that there was no chance of it seeing the light of day.
Well, word got around about what had happened and then people like the live action star of the movie Will Forte would happily tell whoever about how disappointed he was this happened and how much he believed in the film. Crew members would post photos on social media of the shoot, talking about how much they believed in it and how upset they were that all their hard work ended up being a tax write off. Many of them believing that was the end of the story.
Now if you’ve ever watched a Looney Toons Road Runner cartoon, you know that the Coyote always bounces back and he doesn’t stay down for long. Thanks to the filmmakers getting the word out, the fans started to get into the action. Kickstarters and on-line fan funded production companies like Legion M got involved and what seemed like the impossible became possible. They were able to raise the money to find a distributor. Enter Ketchup. Entertainment who is the company releasing this movie in theaters.
So it is a case of life imitating art, because the movie about a guy with tons of determination fighting against corporate greed, became the movie with tons of determination fighting against corporate greed.
As a main street single screen theater we understand the plight of the little guy trying to deal with the greed of the studio system and we hope you take the time this weekend to join us in supporting Mr. Wile E. Coyote and his fight against the ACME corporation and those who thought he would look better as number on a spreadsheet than in the eyes of a laughing child.
