Coyote vs. Acme: the Looney Tunes movie that escaped the vault

Wile E. Coyote is finally getting his day in court. Coyote vs. Acme lands in theaters on August 28, and honestly, the fact that you can read that sentence at all is a small miracle.

If you have been feeling a certain Space Jam energy in the air, you are not imagining it. This is a live-action and hand-drawn hybrid, real actors sharing the frame with a Looney Tunes legend, built on a premise so simple it is perfect: the Coyote, after a lifetime of ACME products that explode, misfire, and drop him off cliffs, decides to sue. Will Forte plays the down-on-his-luck attorney who takes the case. John Cena plays the opposing counsel repping ACME. You already know whether you are in.

The movie that almost never was

Here is the part that stings and then, eventually, sings.

The film was finished. Done. Ready. And in 2023, Warner Bros. decided it was worth more as a tax write-off than as a movie people could actually watch, and shelved it. Not delayed. Shelved, the way Batgirl was shelved, the way real work with real people’s years in it gets quietly filed under “never.” A completed Looney Tunes movie, headed for a vault, never to be seen.

Then it got out. Ketchup Entertainment bought the worldwide rights in 2025, in a deal reported around 50 million dollars, and did the radical thing of letting an audience see the thing that was made for them. August 28 is the finish line of a genuinely strange rescue.

Why we are quietly rooting for it

We have a soft spot for this story, and not a subtle one.

Seriesly exists because something people loved was about to be erased. When TV Time went dark, years of check-ins and ratings and rewatches were headed for the same kind of vault, gone unless someone bothered to save them. We bothered. So a finished, beloved thing getting yanked back from deletion at the last second is, around here, basically our origin myth with better slapstick.

You do not have to care about the corporate saga to enjoy the movie. But it does make Wile E. finally landing on a screen feel like more than a gag. It feels like a small win for the idea that the things we make and love should get to exist.

Mark the date, then forget you have to remember it

A theatrical release is easy to miss. It is one date, months out, competing with everything else in your brain.

So do the lazy thing: put it on your list and let the app carry it. Track it on Seriesly and Coyote vs. Acme sits in your movie library right next to your shows, one tap to mark it seen the night you go. The calendar keeps August 28 on your radar without you having to hold it there yourself.

Then, when you have seen it, rate it. Tell us whether the Coyote finally won, or whether ACME’s lawyers were just too good. We will be in the comments, waiting, ideally not standing under an anvil.

Ika