Product Liability Law Watch: Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

Watched:  08/30/2026

Format:  Regal Cinemas

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dave Green

First:  yes, this is the *completed* movie Warner Bros. was going to just shelve for a tax write-off and then sold to Ketchup Entertainment when word got out and the PR around the move became quite bad.  Yes, I have thought the people who currently own Warner Bros. are absolute chuckle-@#$%s and why having MBAs run your entertainment companies all but guarantees the worst results.

Second:  I almost took a pass on writing this post as, at its heart, Coyote vs. Acme (2026) is a product liability law movie.  And our good pal, JimD, is an actual product liability attorney with a rich history of doing his own blogging.  And I was going to make him go see the movie and write up a post, but assigning homework to friends does not seem like a good way to maintain a pal-ship.

Doing anything with the Looney Tunes characters here in 2026 is a bit of a risk.  Warner Bros. has passed through various hands in the past 25 years, and somehow the people who buy it seem to have no idea what they're doing.  And always seem like they can't wrap their heads around notions like "people enjoy Looney Tunes", because you get the feeling these @#$%wits only feel joy when they can buy another wife or something.

By the time I was in middle school, concerned mom groups (yeah, we had them back then, absolutely) were already raising hell about how the cartoons were raising anti-social kids and we'd all blow ourselves up with dynamite in our quest to be just like Wile E. Coyote.  It was *bonkers*.

Looney Tunes have been mined to do many things since at least the early 90's (I was in high school from 89'-93') when they were relegated to supporting characters on Tiny Toon Adventures, and then featured heavily on urban wear for reasons I never understood.  Taz got his own show for a minute (Taz-Mania), but the only real exposure I suspect Millennials got to Bugs and the gang was Space Jam.  Then, the endless parade of Looney Tunes we were used to UHF channels showing were pushed by Warner Bros. from syndication to Cartoon Network and then Boomerang.  And, then, they just kind of disappeared.  

Thus, I am unsure if anyone under 30 has any idea who Sylvester and Tweety are.  If they do know, I suspect it's from memes or gifs, and not from having watched cartoons as my generation did.  And we did it because we had no internet, and minimal programming for kids across maybe 7 channels on the dial.  Kids, our young Gen-X options were limited.  But it did mean that if you lived in the US and/ or many other countries, we all shared references and understood what Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner were.  

With that in mind, it may be true that had this movie been released by Warner Bros., it would have come out, lost money in theaters, and maybe been scrappy enough to make it up via streaming and other outlets.  I have no way of knowing, and neither do you.  But i know nothing.  If you told me in January that The Odyssey would be a runaway hit of the summer, I would have been a bit surprised, to be honest.

And now that I've seen the movie, I really don't know what would have happened.  Coyote vs. Acme is not un-safe for kids, but, again, it's a movie about product liability law.  It's a legal David v. Goliath movie, about a very powerful monopoly, an indifferent justice system, and the greased wheels of justice turning just one direction.

It is a very 2020's take. It is not insane to think this movie got buried because someone in the C-Suite found the ideas underlying the movie to be overtly anti-monopolistic, which is the go-to these days in the biz world, and they wanted to look their friends in the eye at the pantsless dance-off at Bohemian Grove.

The film opens on a lab where the WB Cartoon Peter Lorre is trying to get a secret message to the outside.  Something sinister is afoot.  Dr. Lorre makes it outside but is stopped by a paramilitary security force.*

30 years later, Wile E. Coyote has missed catching the Roadrunner one too many times, and so sits down with a truly new angle after he realizes the common denominator in his failures are the products he's purchased from the ACME company.  And he's not alone.  Cartoons regularly suffer from injuries and issues caused by the ACME products failing (in spectacular fashion).  

Meanwhile, Will Forte plays Kevin, an attorney who makes a living  - alongside his partners Dottie (Martha Kelly) and Sal (Tone Bell) and his niece, Paige (Lana Condor) - suing for small claims against ACME.  A few hundred here, a thousand there.  Which ACME gladly pays out.  

Wile E. brings his rocket skates to Kevin, and Kevin's ready to send in a claim, but Wile E. seems to want to sue for hundreds of incidents.  

As the lawsuit arrives, it draws the attention of Kevin's former law school classmate, Buddy Crane (John Cena), and things begin to speed up.  

Like Roger Rabbit or the already forgotten Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers movie, cartoons walking among us is taken as a given.  Familiar WB characters appear, including Porky and Daffy, as well as more obscure figures, including some that were based on popular entertainers from their time of debut (see: cartoon Peter Lorre).  A lot are one-off gags - we get maybe ten seconds of Witch Hazel, for example.  It's a lot of fun seeing these characters, many of whom have languished in a post Space Jam world of WB animation.

There's some nice digging into who Wile E. Coyote is, and the movie doesn't really knock the edges off.  He is who he is - a coyote trying to eat a roadrunner.  He's a fellow of singular purpose.  But there's lessons to be had in a world that constantly asks us to give up and go with the flow.  

To be fair, I have no idea if kids would understand this movie, and I don't know if they'd like it.  The cinema I went to showed a raft of trailers for coming animated films,** and it was a reminder of the manic pacing and overstimulation most kids' stuff relies on these days.  Concepts like rocket skates and coyotes getting anvils dropped on them just aren't part of their humor vocabulary.  In short - as Jamie opined on the way home - this was a movie for adults.  

Our theater was surprisingly full (maybe 1/2?) for a 10:30 AM Sunday show.  And the kids definitely got restless as the trial stuff commenced.

But the movie is really funny, imho.  But I was also a guy who gave up on Looney Tunes in his middle school years and rediscovered them in high school, and has never really looked back.  For good or ill (career wise, probably ill) Bug Bunny is a personal hero.  This is the most Looney Tunes these characters have been in forever, as far as I'm concerned (as a guy who keeps forgetting to watch Looney Tunes: Back in Action, despite Stuart assuring me it's pretty good).

Some final thoughts:  

• Martha Kelly remains a champ and elevates everything.  (I also once saw her at ABIA!)
• It's time to bring back this flavor of Looney Tunes. Enough retro-fitting the characters into other concepts.  Let them blow each other up.  
• Will Forte should be in way more stuff.  We really don't have anyone else like him, and he bridges so many flavors of funny while also managing to wrangle pathos.
• I really liked Lana Condor, who I knew from movies where she played a teen.  She kind of slam dunked her part.  Glad for her.
• Letting Wile E. Coyote be Wile E. Coyote the entire time was just kind of magical.  He doesn't need to be particularly "relatable" or nicer.  And I am glad they didn't let him speak - always found that weird except for the "Morning, Ralph" "Morning, Sam" bit.
• Proper use of Pepe le Pew
• I would like a Bugs Bunny movie now, please

*it's unclear to me that even people my own age know who Peter Lorre is and would understand this is a straight up caricature of a real dude

**3/4ths of the trailers were for separate movies, each about a quirky, but relatable young girl - a misfit if you will - who finds she is special somehow, and though she's unsure of herself, embarks on a magical adventure.  It was @#$%ing weird, man.  Get the accountants out of the executive suite.