Did COYOTE VS ACME Ever Stand A Chance?

Any hope we had for the Looney Tunes movie was a fool's hope.

Last week The Wrap broke the news that, despite a large Twitter outcry, Warner Bros was going to shelve - or perhaps delete! - the live action/animation hybrid film Coyote vs Acme. The movie sees hardluck predator Wile E Coyote taking the Acme corporation, who sells him most of his useless and backfiring weaponry, to court. The script is by Samy Burch (among a few other writers), currently Oscar nominated for May/December, and it stars John Cena and Will Forte. I know people who have seen the film, and the response has been very positive. Of course these folks saw the film because they know people involved in the production, so it isn’t exactly the most objective group of viewers, but I buy what they’re selling.

It had been previously announced that Warner was going shelve the movie and take a tax write-off, which it had already done with Batgirl. That movie was fully disappeared (at least until it gets dusted off for some kind of special edition in twenty years) and it looked like the same would happen to Coyote vs Acme. But the internet voices convinced WB to try and find a buyer for the film. Hopes soared; perhaps the movie would be seen after all.

And then The Wrap piece. WB had offered the film to Netflix, Amazon and others for 75 million dollars… and accepted no counter offers. It turns out that David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros, hasn’t even seen the movie himself. Now the movie appears headed towards oblivion.

I must admit that when we heard WB would be shopping the movie around I had some hope, but that was silly. I should have known better. I do know better. A big thing that I learned in my time on the periphery of the movie business, covering it and talking to the people who actually make its wheels spin around, is that it’s not fully a business. You might assume a business would be run with some kind of cold, ruthless logic, with an eye to profit and little else. But the movies aren’t that. They never have been.

To understand Hollywood you have to understand that it’s one part business, one part weird image obsessed high school clique. Decisions get made in this town not because they’re the smartest moves but because of how they will reflect on the decision makers. This is why Coyote vs Acme never stood a chance.

Think about it this way: Zaslav is writing this movie off because he doesn’t have faith in its ability to make money. I don’t really understand why it’s not valuable for streaming - they have Max sitting right there, and the Looney Tunes are a foundational Warner Bros brand - but maybe he’s soured by Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, which was also a sly satirical live action/animation hybrid that premiered on Disney+ and promptly disappeared from all human consciousness (which is wild because it’s quite good). At any rate, he made his choice. And as the CEO that choice has to be solid, and he needs to maintain the trust of those beneath him and of his stockholders.

Now imagine that he made this choice and then he was swayed to sell the film to Netflix. And Netflix takes the movie and makes a hit out of it. Not only has Zaslav functionally lost his company money, he looks like a big dipshit. Just a huge dummy who made the wrong call. You can’t be the guy who made the wrong call; the only thing worse than Coyote vs Acme being a failure for Warner Bros is Coyote vs Acme being a hit for someone else.

The only chance the movie stood, I think, was at that initial moment of backlash. Maybe Zaslav could have reversed course and played it off as he was someone who listened to the people, who was a great respecter of the Looney Tunes fanbase or whatever. Honestly this was his best movie, in my opinion, because the stink of Batgirl hangs heavy.

This is the other side of the image/clique aspect of Hollywood - you have to make the big moneymakers want to make their money at your studio. WB recently lost Christopher Nolan, who went off and made Universal very rich and very happy this year with Oppenheimer. For a while WB was an artist-friendly studio, which is how they got the directors they got on things like the Harry Potter movies. There were missteps but for a good twenty years WB seemed to be the place to go if you were a big filmmaker who wanted to make big movies. But in recent years that has shifted, and I have to imagine that moves like these shelvings will only convince other filmmakers to try and set up their projects elsewhere.

It’s worth noting that amidst the reporting on Coyote vs Acme Margot Robbie’s Lucky Chap production shingle signed a deal with WB; I don’t think this reflects WB being good for creatives, I think this reflects Lucky Chap having just made Barbie and knowing they have the upper hand when it comes to dealing with Warner Bros. They are assuming they will be immune from shelvings. Of course part of Zaslav’s calculation may very well be that there are not many other big studios in town anymore. Don’t want to work at WB? Your options are rapidly shrinking to make large budget films elsewhere.

So maybe deleting Coyote vs Acme is good accounting; perhaps the books will balance on this choice. But I think it’s bad business, and it’s a dumb move. It’s a self-own, and it looks really shitty that Zaslav has now shelved films from some of Warner Bros’ most iconic IPs (they also shelved a Scooby Doo movie). If the Looney Tunes and DC superheroes aren’t safe on the Burbank lot, who is?

The truth of what this movie could have been will likely never be known. It’s not impossible that Zaslav changes course at this late moment but that would be a pretty big display of weakness. He’s already developed the reputation as the movie guy who doesn’t like movies (remember when Scorsese, Spielberg and PT Anderson had to give Zaslav a talking to about not gutting TCM?) and maybe he likes that. These business guys - and Zaslav is a business guy, not a movie guy - are all psychos. They want to look mean and tough. And you know what - I bet this isn’t even the last time he pulls this move, unless Congress gets involved and begins poking around what looks a bit to outsiders like tax fraud.

Before you go - one last thought on this. People online have said that if a movie gets shelved for tax purposes the movie should become public domain. After all, the American people have technically paid for this film. This is a terrible idea, and here’s why - nobody involved gets paid. There would be no residuals; any filmmakers whose deals involved hitting certain performance goals would not kick in. Of course that’s what’s happening when the movie gets shelved, but there’s one more reason this is a HORRIBLE idea - every performance and character in the movie becomes public domain as well. Congrats, John Cena, your likeness is now available for anyone to use for any reason. I understand why this seems like such a bright idea at first, but this is an awful solution that hurts the people who made the movie most of all.