Lana Condor on the shelving, rescue and return of Coyote vs. ACME

Lana Condor was in Japan when Will Forte rang to say Warner Bros. Discovery planned to shelve Coyote vs. ACME, she told The Hollywood Reporter.

Two days earlier she had been getting calls saying trial screenings, the test shows studios hold to gauge audience reaction, were going well. Then came Forte's call. "Call me naive, but I didn't even know you could do that," Condor said of the decision to put a finished film aside with no release.

She did not believe it would end there. Condor told the outlet she had always felt the film was strong and could not accept that a project of that scale would never reach cinemas.

The cartoon-meets-live-action case was first put aside in 2023 by Warner Bros. Discovery, after it had originally been lined up for release that year, according to the same interview. It was then shopped to other companies and landed with Ketchup Entertainment, which set a cinema release for 28 August.

That rescue put Condor back on a red carpet she thought she had lost. She attended the Los Angeles premiere at the Directors Village in Westwood, California, on 26 August 2026, alongside the film's return to the calendar.

The film stars Forte, John Cena and Condor, and was directed by Dave Green. It pairs the long-running Wile E. Coyote character with a courtroom story in which the coyote sues the ACME company over its faulty gadgets. North America, or domestic in industry terms, means the United States and Canada.

Ticket sales followed. The film has earned about US$54.6 million at the North American box office, The Hollywood Reporter reported in its interview published 22 September.

Condor also described watching the film at what the cast and crew called a "funeral" screening after it was shelved. She said it was so good, a memory that kept her convinced it would find a way out.

It was not her first brush with a disappearing release. Her science-fiction romance Moonshot, made for HBO Max, was pulled from the streamer in 2022, she said in the same interview.

After a year spent on action, thriller and mystery projects, Condor said she is ready to return to romance, something she has always held close. She is also set to revisit her To All the Boys role in XO, Kitty Season 3.

For fans, this means two reunions at once. One is the coyote's long-delayed day in court. The other is Condor circling back to the love stories that first made her name.