The Strange Case of a Nearly Doomed Looney Tunes Movie

Perhaps the starkest sign that Coyote vs.

Acme isn’t your typical children’s movie is that it’s based on a New Yorker article.

Yes, it features many Looney Tunes characters that multiple generations know and love, interacting alongside real-life actors in a style similar to prior big-screen efforts, such as Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action .

But the director Dave Green’s film—which opens August 28, after a protracted saga that almost saw it kept from audiences forever—draws from a slyly funny “Shouts & Murmurs” story from 1990.

Written by the humorist Ian Frazier, “Coyote v.

Acme” has a wry and self-aware premise: What would happen if Wile E.

Coyote, the Looney Tune on a constantly unsuccessful hunt for the ever-chipper Road Runner, filed a lawsuit against the (fictional) Acme Corporation for selling him faulty products? “I thought the baseline idea for the movie was just, like, the funniest thing in the world,” Green told me in a recent interview, reminiscing about when he first signed on to direct the film, back in 2019.

He wasn’t the first person in the film industry to be charmed by Frazier’s story .

Despite the erudite tone, the simple notion of Wile E.

Coyote pursuing legal action was amusing enough to Hollywood producers that various attempts were made to develop it for the screen, dating back to an effort by the producer Scott Rudin in the late 1990s.

Warner Bros., which owns Looney Tunes , jump-started the latest version of the project in 2018, and Green completed it in 2022.

Coyote vs.

Acme was initially scheduled to debut the following summer, but it was taken off the schedule early into production; a new release date was never announced.

In the fall of 2023, Warner Bros. told the director that the movie would be shelved entirely .