Written Off by Warner Bros., 'Coyote vs. Acme' Opens to a Rare Rotten Tomatoes Score

Three years after Warner Bros. wrote off a finished feature film rather than release it, "Coyote vs. Acme" is playing in theaters nationwide — and drawing some of the strongest reviews of any Looney Tunes production in the franchise's history. The live-action-animation hybrid, in which Wile E. Coyote sues the Acme Corporation over decades of defective products, opened wide on August 28 through the independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment, closing out a saga that began with the film sitting unreleased on a studio shelf.

The film has become an unlikely test case for how much goodwill, and box office, a shelved project can recover once it finally reaches an audience. Critics have responded with near-unanimous praise, and audiences awarded it the best opening Rotten Tomatoes score of any theatrical Looney Tunes release, according to Rotten Tomatoes' aggregated data.

The Numbers Behind the Opening

"Coyote vs. Acme" opened in roughly 3,575 theaters and took in an estimated $15.5 million over its first weekend, finishing in second place behind "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," which was on track for a sixth consecutive weekend at No. 1, according to wire reporting carried by ABC News. Distributor and box office tracking data compiled by Box Office Mojo and The Numbers put the finalized weekend gross just under $15.9 million, with the film's domestic total climbing toward $19.7 million by midweek.

The film carried a production budget of roughly $70 million, a figure that has shaped much of the commentary around its performance: an opening in the mid-teens is respectable for an independent release but would have been read as underwhelming for a studio tentpole of that cost. For Ketchup Entertainment, however, it is by far the largest debut in the company's history, well ahead of the $3.1 million opening the distributor notched in 2024 with "The Day the Earth Blew Up," another animated Warner Bros. property it rescued from the shelf.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a Certified Fresh 95 percent critics' score from 189 reviews and a 94 percent audience score from early ratings — the highest audience mark ever recorded for a theatrical Looney Tunes film, ahead of the "Space Jam" movies, according to coverage of the film's review debut by ScreenRant. It also received an A grade in CinemaScore exit polling, an unusually strong result for a film that spent years with no announced release plan at all.

How a Finished Film Became a Write-Off

"Coyote vs. Acme," directed by Dave Green and starring Will Forte, John Cena, Lana Condor and Eric Bauza as the voice of Wile E. Coyote, was completed in 2023 under the previous Warner Bros. regime. That year, Warner Bros. Discovery elected not to release the finished film in theaters or on HBO Max, instead taking it as a tax write-off — a decision the studio applied to several completed or near-completed titles, including "Batgirl" and "Scoob! Holiday Haunt," both of which remain unreleased. The move drew sustained criticism from filmmakers, animation-industry workers and fans, who argued that write-off strategies allowed studios to erase finished creative work for accounting purposes without ever giving it a public release.

The backlash around "Coyote vs. Acme" specifically was pronounced enough that it became a recurring talking point in industry coverage of Warner Bros. Discovery's cost-cutting under then-CEO David Zaslav, cited alongside "Batgirl" as evidence that a completed film could simply vanish. That pressure created an opening for a distributor willing to take on the film once Warner Bros. was willing to sell it.

A Distributor's Biggest Bet

Ketchup Entertainment completed its acquisition of worldwide distribution rights in a deal finalized in March 2025, in what the company described as its largest acquisition to date, reported to be worth approximately $50 million according to Cartoon Brew's reporting on the deal. Ketchup Entertainment CEO Gareth West said at the time of the acquisition that the studio was "thrilled to have made a deal with Warner Bros. Pictures to bring this film to audiences worldwide."

"Coyote vs. Acme is a perfect blend of nostalgia and modern storytelling, capturing the essence of the beloved Looney Tunes characters while introducing them to a new generation. We believe it will resonate with both longtime fans and newcomers alike," West said in the statement announcing the deal.

To support a genuine wide release, Ketchup Entertainment separately secured a $100 million prints-and-advertising financing facility, a scale of marketing investment unusual for a distributor of its size, according to reporting by the Hollywood Reporter. The bet is now paying off in reputational terms even if the box office return remains modest relative to the film's original budget. Those most directly affected by the years-long delay were the animators, writers and visual-effects artists who built the film without knowing whether it would ever reach an audience — a group whose finished work became, for a time, a symbol of an industry practice rather than a film. Its eventual release also matters to Warner Bros. Discovery, whose write-off strategy remains a point of scrutiny as "Batgirl" and "Scoob! Holiday Haunt" continue to sit unreleased.

What Happens Next

Director Dave Green marked the release on social media with a message reflecting the years of uncertainty behind it: "'Coyote vs. Acme' is finally, gloriously, in theaters now. Which means one thing. WE WON." The film's trajectory beyond its opening weekend will be closely watched inside the industry as a signal of whether audience goodwill toward a "rescued" film translates into sustained ticket sales. Early data shows the opening weekend accounted for the large majority of its box office to date, a front-loaded pattern typical of films that draw heavily on curiosity and existing fandom in their first days.

The film's reception has also renewed pointed questions about Warner Bros. Discovery's broader write-off practices, with critics and industry observers noting that "Coyote vs. Acme" might never have been made available to test that goodwill at all had the public backlash in 2023 not been loud enough to prompt a sale. Whether that pressure extends to "Batgirl" or other shelved titles remains an open question the studio has not addressed. For now, "Coyote vs. Acme" stands as one of the clearest examples in recent memory of a film moving from studio-ordered erasure to a Certified Fresh theatrical release, with its ultimate commercial fate to be determined over the coming weeks as it competes for screens against the fall release calendar.