Coyote vs. Acme Review: Wile E. Coyote Finally Takes Acme to Court
Wile E. Coyote is suing the Acme Corporation, and Will Forte is the lawyer taking the case. That is the premise of Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action-and-animation courtroom comedy reviewed by Variety on 12 August 2026.
The film combines the classic Looney Tunes cartoon character with real actors and sets, a technique most famously associated with Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Forte plays Kevin Avery, a late-night-TV-ad lawyer who agrees to represent the coyote in a product-liability suit against the company that made every rocket, anvil and giant spring he ever used to chase the Road Runner. John Cena plays the opposing counsel; Lana Condor also stars. Dave Green directed.
The screenplay comes from Samy Burch, whose credits include May December and Late Fame. The story draws inspiration from Ian Frazier's 1990 New Yorker piece, which imagined Wile E. Coyote's legal complaint against Acme in the style of a genuine personal-injury filing. The original cartoons, created and mostly directed by Chuck Jones starting in 1949, never gave the coyote a courtroom — only a canyon and a increasingly creative catalogue of malfunctions.
What makes Coyote vs. Acme stand out is the road it took to reach a screen. Warner Bros. shelved the completed film — the same studio that, in early 2026, faced public anger from Forte himself over the decision, as Variety reported in March. The project had been in limbo since at least February 2024, when Forte first criticised the studio for axing a film he called "incredible" (Variety). Warner Bros. later reversed course and set the film for a theatrical release.
The cast had been attached for years. Cena confirmed his involvement on his official Facebook page in April 2022, writing that he "could've never imagined one of my greatest opponents would be the Road Runner" (Facebook). Condor and director Green joined the project's public push in mid-2026, appearing at Comic-Con alongside fans who had campaigned for the film's release (Variety). A trailer arrived in April 2026 (Variety), and the review landed four months later.
For anyone who grew up watching Wile E. Coyote sprint off a cliff and hold up a tiny umbrella, the appeal is straightforward: the cartoon's silent, unlucky predator finally gets his day in court. The Acme catalogue — explosives that detonate prematurely, catapults that fire backwards, paint that turns gravity on — gets tested by the rules of civil litigation rather than the rules of cartoon physics.
The review itself sits with Variety, and the verdict on whether the film delivers on that premise is theirs to give.
