COYOTE VS ACME (2026)

Highly entertaining and surprisingly poignant, Coyote v ACME delivers the best Looney Tunes film yet thanks to its blending of conspiracy thriller parody, slapstick shenanigans, and heartfelt humanity amongst the live-action animation spectacle.

While watching Coyote v ACME you can't help but compare the film's on-screen David vs Goliath story with the real-life battle that locked away this fourth original Looney Tunes production in a vault for two years. It was indeed a sad day for Looney Tunes fans when in 2018, Warner Bros. shelved Coyote v ACME as a tax write-off. Thanks to distributor Ketchup Entertainment, though, Coyote v ACME lived to grace cinema screens worldwide, proving that sometimes the underdog (or is that 'under-coyote'?) can win the fight.

Set in a world where toons and humans live side-by-side, Coyote vs ACME tells the story of how tenacious carnivore Wile E. Coyote pauses his relentless pursuit of the ever-elusive Road Runner to sue tech-juggernaut ACME for their never-ending list of faulty gadgets that constantly backfire mid-chase. Taking on the case is Kevin (Will Forte), a workaday lawyer who rediscovers his ambition while also uncovering a conspiracy involving ACME that will impact the toon world.

Those who love the likes of All the President's Men and The Verdict will get a kick out of the light-natured lampooning of the conspiracy thriller and court legal drama those films help establish. The key to the success of Coyote v ACME, though, is how director Dave Green (Earth to Echo) and screenwriter Jeremy Slater (Mortal Kombat II) do so without losing any of the stakes at play, blending enough of the serious with plenty of silly to deliver a live-action animation movie that intrigues with every twist and delights with those patented Looney Tunes sequences that generations have loved.

Will Forte is perfectly cast as the facile injury lawyer, with his mix of quirky and earnest complimenting the toon dramatics that leads Kevin on a journey of redemption that is both predictable and enjoyable to watch. Great too is John Cena as the suave yet slimy lawyer for ACME, the WWE legend continuing to embrace the comedic side of his larger persona.

It is the Looney Tunes themselves, of course, that are the real star of Coyote vs ACME. The likes of Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, Tasmanian Devil, and (of course) Coyote are all wonderfully animated and voiced, with the award-winning voice actor Eric Bauza providing excellent work as the voice of many the film's toon characters.

So good is Coyote vs ACME that one would wonder why it was shelved by Warner in the first place. Regardless, this little toon that could has won its day in court and then some.