After an underdog story of being shelved and then getting a theatrical release three years later, Coyote vs. Acme is poised to hit theaters as a loony courtroom misadventure for the ages, answering a question that’s long been running in the back of folks’ minds: what would happen if Wile E. Coyote sued Acme? To answer that, he’ll have to team up with Will Forte and Lana Condor to wrestle John Cena in a court of law to find out in a hybrid live-action animated movie later this month.
This isn’t the first time Looney Tunes has jumped into a hybrid animated-live-action film. Pepperidge Farm remembers the Brendan Fraser-led Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Likewise, every project in the genre still lives in the long shadow of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. With Coyote vs. Acme adding its own ledger to the court records, io9 spoke with director Dave Green and longtime Looney Tunes voice actor Eric Bauza about how their underdog film stands apart from past Looney Tunes adventures and holds its own in a summer stacked with blockbuster heavyweights. While there’s been much ado about how Coyote vs. Acme went from being the movie Warner Bros. didn’t want folks to see to reclaiming that narrative in its own advertisements as a court drama “Acme” doesn’t want viewers to see, Green says the movie folks will see in theaters is “100 percent” untouched since Ketchup Entertainment purchased the distribution rights. Though, if they could have their way, Bauza and Green joked about adding puppets tot he movie in post to really go wild with it. Still, the fact that the movie faced an uphill battle hasn’t led the pair to lose faith that Coyote vs. Acme is a tale worth telling in theaters. “Most of the Looney Tunes movies that’ve been made to this date have been ensemble pictures. Coyote vs. Acme is very much the Iron Man to the Avengers. It is a character study of Wile E. Coyote and what his wants, needs, and obstacles are. He’s got such a singular want. He wakes up every single day expecting and hoping to catch the Roadrunner and eat Roadrunner stew that night,” Green said. “In this way, Wile E. is such an incredible optimist. In getting to feature him in that way as a star of this movie, we really get to know him in a much deeper way that I think audiences haven’t seen him before.”
