‘Coyote vs. Acme' finds a new home after being shelved by Warner Bros.
NEW YORK (AP) — For once, things are working out for Wile E. Coyote.
After being shelved by Warner Bros. in 2023, the Looney Tunes film 'Coyote vs. Acme' has found a new home. Ketchup Entertainment announced Monday that it acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film for an undisclosed sum.
The deal gives new life to one of the three fully completed films that Warner Bros. elected to take a tax write-off on rather than release. The tactic, which followed a change in leadership at Warner Bros. coming out of the pandemic, was widely disparaged by creatives and fans, alike. The other two shelved movies — the $90 million DC Studios production 'Batgirl' and the animated 'Scoob! Holiday Haunt' — remain unreleased.
But 'Coyote vs. Acme' will be salvaged from the dustbin. Ketchup Entertainment plans a theatrical release at an unspecified future date.
'We're thrilled to have made a deal with Warner Bros. Pictures to bring this film to audiences worldwide,' Gareth West, chief executive of Ketchup Entertainment, said in a statement. ''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.'
Directed by Dave Green and based on a New Yorker article by Ian Frazier, 'Coyote vs. Acme' follows Wile E. Coyote in a lawsuit against Acme Corporation for the many faulty products that failed to catch him the Road Runner. The live-action animated hybrid stars John Cena and Will Forte.
Deadline earlier reported that Ketchup paid about $50 million for the film, which cost $70 million to produce. Ketchup, a distribution company launched in 2012, also recently released another Looney Tunes film jettisoned by Warner Bros.: 'The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.' In three weeks of release, it's grossed $8.2 million in domestic ticket sales.
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Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 5.00%increase; green up pointing triangle Chief Executive David Zaslav loves the 1941 Humphrey Bogart classic 'The Maltese Falcon' about a group of unsavory characters searching for an elusive statuette of a gold jewel-encrusted falcon. The falcon is 'the stuff dreams are made of,' Bogart's character famously says, driving people to do just about anything to possess it. Combining Warner with Discovery was Zaslav's Maltese falcon. And like the movie's protagonists, Zaslav couldn't secure it. His old world entertainment titan's ambition collided with the realities of a media business in turmoil. Now, three years after he closed on a deal that merged his Discovery cable TV networks with AT&T's WarnerMedia business, Zaslav is breaking it into two separate companies. The CEO, who has enjoyed industry-topping paydays throughout the tumultuous three-year marriage, will sit atop the company home to Warner movie and television studios and HBO Max streaming service. 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Early on, he challenged executives over greenlighting a Clint Eastwood-directed movie that was a box office disappointment. 'Alto Knights,' a mob movie starring Robert De Niro and written by his Hamptons neighbor and 'Goodfellas' scribe Nicholas Pileggi that Zaslav championed, was a commercial and critical flop. A chunk of the CEO's compensation is based on free cash flow, which soared as the company cut costs. Many division heads, in particular, chafed at having to rein in production and marketing budgets to help pay down the debt and increase free cash flow. Warner employees grimaced at the optics of Zaslav sitting courtside at New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers games, next to pals such as John McEnroe, David Geffen and Dustin Hoffman while staff lost their jobs. Some of Zaslav's strategic moves might pay off in the long run. 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