Could We’ve Had Coyote vs ACME Movie 20 Years Ago?

RJ Writing Ink’s Retelling of the Story of Coyote vs ACME, Part 3: Movie Time

Coyote vs ACME has only come out now, but if things had gone its way, it would’ve been released three years ago. However, we could’ve had the movie almost twenty years ago if Warner had been more willing to cooperate.

I’m RJ Writing Ink, and this is part three of my series on the story behind Coyote vs ACME as best as I can tell it. This time, we’re going to talk about the journey from short story to movie. Again, I am working with a myriad of sources, so I don’t know how accurate any of this is. This is just me doing my best.

Initial Attempts

In 1998, Scott Rudin, a producer whose credits include The Truman Show, The Book of Mormon, School of Rock, and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, optioned, or rented, the film rights to the article. From what I can gather online, Rudin was inspired by the success of the legendary 80s live-action/animation hybrid film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And to his credit, the film was already possible to make in the 90s. Warner Bros had just done Space Jam two years earlier, after all! However, because Rudin’s production studio was independent, Warner Bros refused to lend out the Looney Tunes. No Looney Tunes, no movie. Thus, the film went into development hell, with the options ultimately expiring in 2006.

Fast forward to 2015, to James Gunn. He had just made it big in Hollywood thanks to the success of Guardians of the Galaxy a year earlier, and that gave him a lot of pull. Again, I don’t entirely know how he found out about it, but Gunn learned about Frazier’s short story, saw its potential, and pitched it directly to Warner Bros. In a 2025 interview with CBR, screenwriter/producer Jeremy Slater, himself a friend of Gunn and a Looney Tunes fan, said that Gunn brought him on board to write the first draft. According to Slater, he had a blast. Unfortunately for him, Warner Bros. rejected his draft, and he eventually moved on to other work. That’s just the nature of the work, though; it happens.

The film was first announced to the public in August 2018, with the director of The LEGO Batman Movie, Chris McKay, as its producer, but he ultimately left the project in 2020. In the end, final credit went to Dave Green, director of the Michael Bay TMNT movie, Out of the Shadows, Gunn, Slater, and Samy Burch, who wrote the final screenplay. In a recent interview, she said she was surprised she got tapped for the job, but that she did her best to capture who Wile E. Coyote is. And before I even finished reading the interview, I could already tell that she had succeeded. The interviewer themselves also agreed.

As for the casting, the first big role, the villain, was announced in February 2022. And his name was JOHN CENA!

Casting Choices

No, but seriously, John Cena was cast as Buddy Crane, the main attorney for ACME. The former actor-turned-wrestler had already worked with Gunn on The Suicide Squad, so they knew how to work with each other. Personally, I don’t think they could’ve picked anyone better to play Buddy Crane. John Cena is tall, physically imposing, and his muscles look ready to bench-press an anvil. The fact that he plays his role in a world filled with living Tunes completely seriously only makes it funnier. Not to mention how the name is a double joke. The last name draws on Wile E. Coyote’s own history with birds, while the first one references Buddy. Buddy was one of the first cartoon characters Warner Bros ever made, but he was so boring that they retired him after just two years. These days, he’s best remembered as being the victim of the Warner Siblings’ mallets in Animaniacs, which should tell you all you need to know about Buddy Crane as a character.

One month later, the film hired Will Forte and Lana Condor as the main human protagonists, with Will playing Wile E.’s lawyer, Henry Avery, which was yet another good choice. Not only is Will Forte a good actor (I love him as Lincoln in Clone High), but his physical appearance makes him an excellent foil to Cena’s Buddy. And, as I mentioned in my review of the film, he’s a perfect foil to Wile E. Coyote as a fellow example of a Sisyphean character. Like Wile E. and Sisyphus, he was given this impossible task that he was forced to fulfill; in his case, being genuinely good as a lawyer put a lot of pressure on him. And, because he kept failing to get his own boulder up the hill (win his cases), he became too afraid to try anymore, which is something that Forte himself would have to learn in the fight to get this movie released.

ZASLAVVVVVV!!!!!!

All told, everything was going smoothly with Coyote vs ACME. This modern-day fusion of David vs. Goliath and Sisyphus was getting finished, and it was set to release in 2023. For a moment, it looked as though Wile E., our Sisyphus, was going to get his boulder up the hill and get a win. If only the gods were so willing to allow this. But just like in the ancient myth, divine intervention came to strike the clever Sisyphus down.

In the next part, we go over the man who tried to shut this movie down, the fight to get it seen, and my own role with The Game of Nerds getting it out there.