Coyote vs. Acme brings Wile E. Coyote's long-running struggle with malfunctioning Acme products into a live-action world where cartoon characters and humans coexist. Directed by Dave Green and written by Samy Burch from a story by Burch, James Gunn, and Jeremy Slater, the film follows Wile E. after yet another disastrous attempt to catch the Road Runner. Instead of simply trying another Acme invention, he decides to challenge the company responsible for the products that have repeatedly turned his schemes into catastrophes.
His search for legal help leads him to Kevin Avery (Will Forte), a struggling Albuquerque personal-injury lawyer whose firm specializes in settling claims involving cartoon accidents. Kevin initially has little interest in taking on Acme in a major case, but his niece and law intern Paige Avery (Lana Condor) sees an opportunity to fight a much larger battle. Their opponent is Buddy Crane (John Cena), Acme's formidable attorney and Kevin's former law-school rival.
The movie is based on the premise of Ian Frazier's 1990 New Yorker humor piece, 'Coyote v. Acme.' Rather than simply reproducing the article, the filmmakers developed a feature-length story around Wile E.'s character and his relationship with Kevin. The resulting film combines courtroom comedy, mystery, physical slapstick, and the visual language of classic Looney Tunes. Ketchup Entertainment released the completed film theatrically on August 28, 2026, after the project spent years caught in a highly unusual studio-release saga.
The central conflict begins with Wile E. Coyote doing what he has always done: devising increasingly elaborate ways to catch the Road Runner with products ordered from Acme. The difference this time is that the failure of the products becomes the basis for legal action. After seeing an advertisement for Avery, Jones & Maltese, Wile E. heads to Albuquerque looking for an attorney willing to take his case.
Kevin Avery is not portrayed as a triumphant courtroom hero at the beginning of the story. He is a jaded personal-injury lawyer who has made a career out of settling relatively small claims. His firm's name is itself a Looney Tunes reference, combining the names of animation figures Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Michael Maltese. Paige Avery, Kevin's niece and intern, is considerably more ambitious and recognizes that Wile E.'s collection of damaged Acme products may represent something much larger than an ordinary injury claim.
The case grows beyond a dispute over one customer's purchases. Kevin and Paige find themselves confronting Acme's enormous corporate legal operation, represented by Buddy Crane. Their investigation develops into more than a straightforward product-liability story, with the film introducing a mystery surrounding Acme and characters from the Looney Tunes universe. This gives the movie a detective-story structure alongside its courtroom comedy.
Will Forte's Kevin Avery provides the human perspective through which much of the story is experienced. Kevin begins as a lawyer who has become accustomed to settling cases rather than fighting major corporations. Wile E.'s arrival forces him to reconsider that approach, while Paige pushes him toward taking the case seriously instead of accepting the easy settlement.
Lana Condor plays Paige Avery, whose enthusiasm and determination contrast with Kevin's reluctance. Her role is important to the investigation because she treats Wile E.'s collection of Acme products as potential evidence rather than simply another example of the coyote's bad luck. The developing partnership between Kevin and Wile E. forms the emotional center of the story.
John Cena plays Buddy Crane, Acme's well-funded attorney. Crane is not simply a generic corporate antagonist: he and Kevin have a history from law school, giving the legal battle a personal dimension. Tone Bell appears as Sal Maltese, while P.J. Byrne plays Bill Pellicanos. The voice performances are led by Eric Bauza, who voices Wile E. Coyote as well as numerous Looney Tunes characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety, and the Road Runner. Candi Milo and Jim Cummings also contribute additional Looney Tunes voices.
One of the film's defining features is its combination of human performers with animated Looney Tunes characters. Instead of placing the story entirely inside an animated environment, Dave Green's film creates a world in which cartoon characters interact naturally with people, buildings, vehicles, courtroom surroundings, and everyday technology. The approach recalls earlier hybrid productions such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back in Action while giving the characters a more contemporary setting.
The animation is built around the exaggerated physical comedy associated with Wile E. Coyote. Rocket-powered shoes, magnets, explosives, falling objects, and other familiar Acme inventions become part of the physical vocabulary of the film. The opening pursuit puts several of these ideas together in a sequence that deliberately recalls the escalating cause-and-effect structure of the classic Road Runner cartoons.
The technical credits include cinematographer Brandon Trost, editor Carsten Kurpanek, production designer Steve Arnold, and composer Steven Price. Price's score supports a film that has to move between courtroom scenes, investigative sequences, human comedy, and large-scale cartoon destruction without losing the distinctive rhythm of Looney Tunes.
The film's real-world history gives its courtroom story an unusual parallel. Coyote vs. Acme had been completed and was originally intended for release through Warner Bros., but in November 2023 the studio announced that it would not release the movie, leading to an intense public and industry response. Warner Bros. eventually allowed the filmmakers to seek another distributor, and Ketchup Entertainment acquired the film in 2025 before taking it to theaters in 2026.
That history gives the finished movie an accidental extra layer. On screen, Wile E. Coyote is a persistent underdog challenging a vastly larger corporation. Behind the scenes, the completed production itself became the subject of an unusual fight over whether audiences would ever get to see it. The theatrical release therefore became part of the film's identity before many viewers had even seen it.
The movie also reinterprets Wile E. Coyote's relationship with the Road Runner. Rather than treating the pair simply as predator and prey, the story gives their connection additional emotional context while preserving the fundamental pursuit that defines the classic cartoons. Other Looney Tunes characters receive new roles within the film's human-scale world, including Foghorn Leghorn as an Acme executive and Bugs Bunny in a more mysterious role. This combination of familiar characters, a new legal premise, and the film's unusual production history gives Coyote vs. Acme considerably more to explore than a straightforward cartoon adaptation.