For almost eight decades now, Warner Bros animation has brought us the misadventures of Wile E. Coyote, super genius, in his thankless quest to capture and consume his natural prey, a Road Runner. This is, of course, a normal part of the life cycle of a predator such as a coyote: to kill and eat smaller animals such as birds. However, in all this time, Mr. Coyote has not only failed at every attempt to capture his quarry, but has typically done so in such a spectacularly inept fashion that we have taken his misfortune as entertainment. We laugh at each ill-timed explosion, chortle every time he plunges off a cliff, and guffaw whenever a piece of a bluff snaps off and crushes him into an accordion. A good time has been had by all. Well, all except for Wile E. Coyote himself, of course.

But this week, all that changes. This week, for the first time since the Coyote and Road Runner were created by Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese in the 1949 short Fast and Furry-Ous, we’re rooting for the Coyote, as the feature film Coyote Vs. Acme is unleashed upon the world.

This newest Looney Tunes movie is, surprisingly, based on a humor piece first published in The New Yorker in 1990. Ian Frazier wrote his comedic essay “Coyote V. Acme” in the form of a legal brief outlining a lawsuit put forth by Wile E. Coyote against the Acme Corporation, whose products he always used in his pursuit of the Road Runner and which always seemed to malfunction in the most hilarious ways possible. The essay was very funny – in fact, when I first started teaching it was included in our ninth grade textbook as an example of satire, and I enjoyed teaching it. But the idea that it would one day blow up and inspire a feature film never would have occurred to me.

Coyote Vs. Acme, based on Frazier’s essay and developed for the screen by writers Samy Burch, Jeremy Slater, and James Gunn, is opening in theaters today. This film, directed by Dave Green, was filmed back in 2022 and was planned for a release the next year, but parent company Warner Bros. Discovery decided to cancel its release. This was part of a slate of films and TV projects that were unceremoniously dumped at the time so that the company could write their costs off on their taxes as a loss. (The most infamous of these, besides Coyote Vs. Acme, was an almost fully completed Batgirl movie starring Leslie Grace as Batgirl, America’s sweetheart Brendan Fraser as Firefly, and Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman.) Despite the fact that everybody who had actually seen Coyote Vs. Acme was really supportive of the film, with people calling it the funniest movie in years, it seemed as though it would never see the light of day.

But this is a case, much like how we all collectively made Paramount change the design of Sonic the Hedgehog after the first trailer for his movie placed the character into some horrific uncanny valley situation that would have given children nightmares, where the internet actually did some good. As time passed, the groundswell of support for Coyote Vs. Acme only grew. Word leaked that it was one of the best unreleased movies ever, that it was a return to form for the Looney Tunes greats after disasters like the second Space Jam movie, and that the Coyote’s co-stars John Cena and Will Forte were at the absolute top of their game. People pushed. People put pressure on Warner Bros. And eventually, the media monolith relented and sold the rights to distribute the film to Ketchup Entertainment, which similarly saved the previous Looney Tunes film The Day the Earth Blew Up from being a cinematic footnote last year. 

Today, after all this confusion, the movie is finally hitting movie theaters, and I think it’s probably more important that you see this movie IN those theaters than any other film this year. Yeah, I know that Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the movie that’s made all the money. The Odyssey is probably gonna win all the awards. But those movies have a media push and corporate backing helping them out. Frankly – and I do not mean this as a slight against either film – they don’t NEED our help.

Coyote Vs. Acme does.

I’m not asking you to see this movie just because I love the Looney Tunes, although I do. I’m not asking because virtually every critic in the world is raving about how funny, heartfelt, and entertaining the film is, although they are. I’m asking you to see it because what Warner Bros. tried to do to this movie, what they did to Batgirl and other films is a load of horsecrap, and we need to show them that we know it’s not right.

Movies are art. Even corporate movies, even movies that are built on massive IPs are still art, and art is important. Art is how we explore our understanding of the world, and whether we’re doing it through some historical epic that enlightens us about our own past or whether we’re delving into things that terrify us or things that make us laugh makes no difference. The big studios greenlight movies based on an expectation of profitability, and I don’t object to that. It’s called show business, after all, and I’m not asking them to start making movies they EXPECT to lose money on. But any movie is a labor of love for the people involved: the writers, the directors, the actors, the musicians, the animators…almost any movie you see (and ESPECIALLY any studio movie you see) is the result of the efforts of hundreds of people. And with the exception of perhaps the Sharknado franchise, nobody is TRYING to make a bad film. 

The long and short of it is, I don’t care about Warner Bros and their pocketbooks, but I DO care very much about the people who MADE the movie, and THEY are the ones I want to support.

The value of art should go beyond just what the numbers on a page add up to. Art should be evaluated by what it does to an audience, the emotions it evokes, the joy that it brings, the tears that it wrings from your heart, the laughs that erupt from your throat. These are the things that give a movie true value, and that’s not the sort of thing that can be quantified. It can’t be decided by an accountant. It can only be decided by an audience. And I believe that any movie deserves, at bare minimum, the CHANCE to find that audience. I prefer theatrical releases, of course, but at least direct-to-streaming or DVD or TV movies have a SHOT at being seen. If you chalk up a movie as a loss and stuff it in a drawer somewhere before anyone gets to see it, nobody ever has that chance, and that’s simply not right.

A movie that is never released never has a chance to find an audience, and it deserves that chance. And even if it turns out to be terrible, WE should be the ones who get to decide that, not some jackass trying to balance a ledger.

In one of those little quirks of fate, my son Eddie and I happen to have birthdays within a few days of each other, and we both have movies we wanted to see this weekend, so we made a deal. I’m going to go with him to see Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie, and he’s going with me to see Coyote Vs. Acme. (His mom is going to be there with us too, of course, so if you’re reading this Erin, you get to pick the next movie, okay?)

But when we get there, I want to see that theater full. I want you all out there with me, watching the Coyote get smashed by an anvil, swallow some dynamite, and finally take the fight back to the Acme Corporation. Because more so than any previous Looney Tunes movie, this one has a meaning beyond what’s on the screen. If you love movies, you should see this in theaters. If you love animation, you should see this in theaters. And if you want to send a message to Warner Bros and the rest of them that these things mean more to us than numbers in a column, then you need to come out to the theater with Eddie and me and see this movie. 

And in the immortal words of the Coyote’s ancient nemesis, “Beep-beep.”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok.