Films are often scrapped for the purposes of avoiding risks or losing a lot of money if the script isn’t deemed interesting or impactful enough towards its audiences. However, it’s not often to see a film that is completely finished just get shoved away from the public at last minute notice. This was the case of a new film known as Coyote vs Acme.
Coyote vs Acme is a new live action and animated hybrid film created by Warner Brothers, starring Will Forte and John Cena. The film centers around the plot of Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation for their products backfiring on him during each of his attempts to catch the roadrunner. The film’s creation itself cost around $72 million, having started development way back in 2018.
However, during November in 2023, the film had been scrapped for a tax write-off for $30 million after it was finished, so it would not be released to the public. The CEO of Warner Bros who made this decision, David Zaslav, didn’t even bother seeing the movie during testing as he showed no interest in the finished film. Ironically enough though, testing audiences showed a lot of positive views towards the movie when they actually watched it, earning the movie 14 points above the norm for a family film.
After just a few days of backlash from the media once word spread of this, Coyote vs Acme was put up to be potentially bought by other distributors such as Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount to hopefully be released by them instead. Disappointment was quickly met though, because as of February, Warner Bros officially announced that the decision to shelve the movie would be final. Warner Bros had many offers for the film, but they were set on a price of $75 to $80 million to sell the movie, though none of the buyers were able to match their price.
It’s frustrating to see this kind of decision being allowed to even take place, especially since the crew of the movie were kept in the dark and hadn’t been told that the film would be shelved until after it was all finished. Because David Zaslav hadn’t seen the movie either when deciding this, he had absolutely no right to assume the movie would flop when the media and even testing audiences showed positive reactions and excitement for it. There’s only so much hope that Warner Bros learns from this before making the decision to scrap and waste the hard efforts of many talented people from another possible loved project.
