You ever hear a news story that... you just can't believe because it's so freaking dumb? Like those Florida Man stories or some of the many weird tales in history? Coyote vs Acme is just... so stupid of a news story that frankly I don't even know what to say here. Like, every single level in this story is so stupid that it baffles me that someone could make this choice without being laughed at by everyone in the company. I thought the Nimona debacle was a disaster... Nimoma looks quaint compared to this, honestly The Thief and the Cobbler doesn't seem like as big a mess, though it is easy to make comments like that when the situation is not yet entirely resolved, and the ramifications of these actions have yet to completely unfurl. To put bluntly, We're only at the tip of the iceberg of this situation here, and to put it even more bluntly, this is only the tip of a very horrid iceberg.
Coyote vs Acme was a highly anticipated feature from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, it was about Wile E. Coyote, the iconic Looney Tunes character, getting in a lawsuit against the Acme corporation for their products. People were excited for this movie, for starters, it's another Looney Tunes Live-Action Mix, and people are having nostalgic connections to the previous movies, Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, this would also be the first time that the Coyote has been a main star in a movie since arguably The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie back in 1979. The film was first shelved in late 2023, so it could be a tax write-off, alongside previously shelved movies Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt.
The immediate problem should be noticed, the Looney Tunes are literally one of Warner Bros.' most popular franchises, having earned a total revenue of over 15 Billion dollars, and of the characters, Wile E. Coyote is one of the most popular, ranking at Number 3 on The A.V. Club's Top 40 Best Looney Tunes Characters, and at Number 7 on Cracked's Top 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Characters. There is literally no benefit to axing this movie, the only reason I can think of that they believed it would be more profitable to shelve this movie entirely, is because they're worried it will bomb. To play devil's advocate here, the previous Looney Tunes Movie, 2021's Space Jam: A New Legacy, grossed over one-hundred sixty-three million dollars, on a one-hundred and fifty million dollar budget. While those are good numbers, that does mean that the movie pretty much broke even, looking at it from a purely marketing stand-point, what conclusion would you draw if you saw those numbers? Of course, as a counter, some may point out that Space Jam is a meme franchise and most people would only go see it in theatres as a joke, and the only way anyone would actually recommend it unironically would be if the movie was so phenomenally good it made you forget you were watching a sequel to Space Jam. I don't know if I would, I still haven't watched it. I am very behind on the animated releases of 2021.
Speaking of that fact, I'm honestly surprised that Space Jam even broke even at the box office because that was 2021. If I need to remind you, 2020 was the year everything shut down because of a global pandemic, and it wasn't over in 2021, though people were pretending like it was. I couldn't be the only one who was avoiding movie theatres because they still didn't feel completely safe, honestly releasing movies in theatres in 2020 and 2021 just seemed like a bad idea, and it also didn't help that Space Jam also went directly to streaming simultaneously. Yeah, that's another thing people tend to forget, a lot of people are still willing to see movies in theatres, but because theatre prices are expensive, many people would prefer to watch a movie on streaming instead, predominately because it's cheaper to pay ten dollars a month for HBO Max and its wall of content instead of fifteen to twenty dollars for a movie ticket that only lets you see one movie. Now I hate the streaming era, but that is a different argument for another time, my point is, box office numbers probably are not the measure of popularity that some people might think they are. Especially since we have things like home media releases, merchandise sales, and of course streaming numbers.
Regardless, someone at WB (Only keeping their name out of this to try and remain somewhat professional) is worried that this movie would bomb, so decided to pull it. However, because of public backlash, they brought in some potential buyers, only for it to be revealed that they didn't even want to sell the movie due to worries that the movie would be a smash hit and embarrass WB. This is the stupidest thing I've read since Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot called something a "Quadruple-A Game" and I swear reading that made me lose braincells. Let me put it like this; What WB is doing with Coyote vs. Acme is like if McDonald's decided to not bring back the McRib, and then decided to make a law that only they could sell ribs in case some other restaurant made their own Rib Sandwich, and made more money than they could. So they aren't selling their rib sandwich anymore, but they also don't want to not make money off of it. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, except the rock is made of soapstone, and the "hard place" is Cotton-Candy Rainbow Land.
This whole situation is just stupid, it's the kind of stupid that isn't even funny. Decisions like this prove that there is a problem with management at Warner Bros, decisions that, to quote Treasure Planet's Captain Amelia, "Displays a level of ineptitude that borders on the imbecilic", and the sad thing is... this isn't even new. Multiple shows such as Sym-Bionic Titan, Beware The Batman, and Megas XLR have become tax-write offs in the past, and there was the previously mentioned Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt. This is indicative of a deeper problem, one that I am not even slightly educated enough to start speculating upon. I've heard some claim that this is going to be the event that causes either the entire film industry to change or the Hollywood system to be completely burned to the ground, metaphorically speaking of course. I am not optimistic, I feel we've been here before, maybe not with movies, but with music, or video games, or internet content, that one event that everyone believed was gonna bring nothing but great changes, but then it ended up being "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" except we didn't even get a new boss. Maybe I'm wrong, but as it has been said before, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes".
I used a lot of big words in this blog... I want ice cream.
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