Wile E. Coyote Is Done Being the Punchline in 'Coyote vs. ACME' Final Trailer

Suffering succotash! Ketchup Entertainment gave us the last Coyote vs. Acme trailer today, with tickets now on sale ahead of the Aug. 28 release.

Wild how that last sentence took almost three years to come to fruition. Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the finished film in November 2023 to claim roughly $30 million as a tax write-down, and we covered the fallout as it happened.

Ketchup rescued it in March 2025 for a reported $50 million. The coyote lived to fight another day, and we couldn't be more excited.

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Why the Gag Needs a Character

Wile E. Coyote has been losing on purpose since 1949. He basically exists to fail, reset, and fail again, and to keep the gag going, he never gets to learn anything. Samy Burch's screenplay, adapted from Ian Frazier's 1990 New Yorker piece, treats that pattern as something to explore.

Will Forte plays billboard attorney Kevin Avery. John Cena plays the Acme counsel arguing the damage was self-inflicted. So this is just a legal drama that happens to be filled with Looney Tunes characters.

Foghorn Leghorn asks at what looks to be a press conference, "Is there anyone in the whole world who cares what happens to the Coyote—at all?!"

Avery says, "Yeah. I do." And, dang it, we do too!

If you want to put a spin on an old tale, take a figure the audience has only ever laughed at and ask them to want something for him. It's an easy storytelling shortcut.

Burch's Fingerprints Are Still Visible

Burch also wrote May December, and when she came on our podcast, she talked about building tension out of what characters withhold rather than what they announce.

A Looney Tunes courtroom comedy seems like the opposite assignment, but it isn't. Wile E. never speaks, per tradition. Every emotional beat has to land through a silent character and the people arguing over him, which is subtext by structural necessity. If you're writing a protagonist who can't explain himself, this will be a great example to watch.

The Trailer Sells the Stakes

Dave Green directs, with Brandon Trost shooting a live-action and 3DCG hybrid set in Albuquerque. The animation integration looks clean, but the trailer isn't necessarily leaning too hard on the technology, even though it looks solid. We're focused on the underdog story of it all, and how this is about a man and a coyote super-genius who might lose. We made a similar point about the Odyssey trailer in May. As viewers, we remember when somebody wants something and might not get it. Spectacle is the closer, never the opener.

Trailer editing is storytelling in miniature, which might sound obvious. But think about establishing the want in the first 15 seconds, then earn your visual showpiece. If your audience can't name what your character is after by the halfway mark, go back to the drawing board. Our breakdown of the first law of scene writing applies to marketing material more than most filmmakers admit.

James Gunn and Chris DeFaria produced. Lana Condor, P.J. Byrne, Tone Bell, Martha Kelly, and Luis Guzmán co-star, with Eric Bauza voicing the Looney Tunes roster.