‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Is Now Tracking to Shatter Ketchup Entertainment’s Box Office Record Before It Even Opens

Few films in recent memory have carried a backstory quite as dramatic as this one. Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to shelve a completed, well-reviewed movie for a tax write-off became one of the industry’s most talked-about controversies, turning a family-friendly Looney Tunes comedy into an unlikely symbol of Hollywood’s willingness to bury finished work rather than release it.

That controversy has followed the film every step of the way toward its long-delayed theatrical debut. Ketchup Entertainment rescued the project from the studio’s scrap heap for a reported $50 million in March 2025, and the film has spent the months since building buzz through a marketing campaign that leaned directly into its own troubled history, complete with a trailer tagline reading “The Film Acme Didn’t Want You to See.”

That underdog narrative now appears to be translating into real box office momentum. According to Global Box Office, ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ is tracking to earn between $16 million and $22 million in its opening weekend, which would mark the highest-grossing domestic opening weekend in Ketchup Entertainment’s history. That projection represents a dramatic jump from earlier estimates, which had placed the film’s opening anywhere from a mere $3 million to $8 million just weeks before its release.

That kind of tracking swing is genuinely rare this late in a film’s promotional cycle. Industry trade coverage had earlier noted that awareness for the film climbed significantly in the days leading up to release, even as interest levels initially stayed flatter than distributors would have liked, suggesting the film’s underdog story was finally cutting through to a wider audience than expected.

The film’s road to theaters has been unusually public for a studio release. Completed in 2023 at a reported production cost of around $70 million, ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ was shelved by Warner Bros. as part of a broader strategy of writing off finished projects, a decision that sparked public backlash from the film’s own cast and crew, along with support from other filmmakers who saw the move as emblematic of a larger industry problem.

Directed by Dave Green from a script by Samy Burch, based on a story credited to Burch, James Gunn, and Jeremy Slater, the film blends live-action and animation in the tradition of movies like ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ and ‘Space Jam.’ Will Forte stars as billboard accident lawyer Kevin Avery, who teams up with Wile E. Coyote, voiced by Eric Bauza, to take legal action against ACME Inc. and its corporate attorney Buddy Crane, played by John Cena. Lana Condor and P.J. Byrne round out the supporting cast.

Critically, the film has performed well beyond expectations, currently holding a 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75 on Metacritic, numbers strong enough that some early reactions have called it the best live-action and animation hybrid since ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ Ketchup Entertainment is releasing the film exclusively in theaters with no streaming date announced, a deliberate choice given the film’s unusual journey from finished product to abandoned asset to theatrical release.

Given Ketchup’s spottier track record with previous releases like ‘Hypnotic’ and ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie,’ a strong opening weekend for ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ would represent a genuine turnaround for the distributor, and a pointed rebuke of Warner Bros.’ original decision to bury the film entirely.

With the film opening Aug. 28, the coming days will reveal whether this tracking surge holds up against real ticket sales.

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