Posted in: Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: coyote vs. acme

Coyote vs. Acme: Warner Bros. Is Reportedly Negotiating A Big Sale

Mere days after scrubbing the Looney Toons' existence from MAX, Warner Bros. is reportedly negotiating the sale of Coyote vs. Acme.

What is going on over at Warner Bros.? To say that things appear in chaos would be the understatement of the century, and it's not recent. However, it does seem like the chaos has gotten worse in the last couple of months. Or, they aren't as good at hiding how insane things have gotten behind the scenes. This story started two and a half years ago, but Coyote vs. Acme didn't fade away like Scoob! Holiday Haunt or Batgirl did. We talked about those movies for a couple of weeks, but people have been loudly raging about this completed film that reportedly tested as well as Barbie got shelved because of Warner Bros.'s bad financial decisions. The baffling decisions haven't stopped there; Warner Bros. has removed all traces of Looney Toons from MAX, and around the same time as Batgirl and Holiday Haunt getting the boot, they also sold The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie off to another distributor. For some god-forsaken reason, Warner Bros. doesn't see any value in characters that have been around for almost 100 years.

Anyway, it seems conversations have started up again, or at least that is the latest report that is going around. When the type of shelving like Coyote vs. Acme happens, they are often the final nail in the coffin because it's a mess of legal and financial paperwork to try to bring the movie back. If you make money, the tax break is null and void, and you have to give the money back. However, according to Deadline, Warner Bros. might have found the right amount of money to deal with that mess (because there is always a number). Gareth West's distributor-financier Ketchup Entertainment, who also picked up The Day the Earth Blew Up, is reportedly"negotiating an all-rights acquisition in the $50M range." The ink on this contract is very much not dry, and while this is good news if it happens, it feels like yet another slap in the face to the creatives behind Holiday Haunt and Batgirl. It might be even worse for Holiday Haunt because, unlike Batgirl, which needed post-production, Holiday Haunt was like Coyote vs. Acme: if not completed, then extremely close to being finished.

Coyote vs. Acme And Warner Bros.'s Being The Worst

One could say things started all the way back in August 2022 when Scoob! Holiday Haunt and Batgirl, two films that were either very close to finishing production or in post-production, were canceled due to tax purposes. At the time, the backlash was pretty loud [mostly for Batgirl, which is a shame because Scoob! is just as tragic], and you would think executives would learn from their mistakes and wouldn't pull a stunt like that again.

Fast forward to November 2023, and it's apparent no one is learning lessons anymore, as Warner Bros. Discovery shelved Coyote vs. Acme for tax purposes. The reaction was just as loud, and while it sounded like there was a chance the film could end up at another studio or streamer, a massive report released in February 2024 by The Wrap revealed that Warner Bros. went into negotiations in what appeared to be bad faith. Executives who had never seen the final film put the nails in the coffin, and it honestly looked like the film would be lost. Since then, several actors and people who have worked on the film have expressed how upset they are that the film was shelved the way it was. Warner Bros. continues to make the worst possible business decisions in a real-world, real-time example of "fucking around and finding out."

Mere days after scrubbing the Looney Toons' existence from MAX, Warner Bros. is reportedly negotiating the sale of Coyote vs. Acme.

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