Warner Bros. Wrote Off 'Coyote vs. Acme.' It Just Passed $100 Million.

Ketchup Entertainment paid $50 million for the rights to the shelved Looney Tunes film and put it in theaters.

“Coyote vs. Acme,” the Wile E. Coyote comedy Warner Bros. treated as a tax write-off rather than release, has crossed $100 million worldwide. IndieWire reported the milestone on September 22, 2026, citing Rentrak figures good through Sunday.

Warner Bros. doesn't collect on any of it. The distributor that does is Ketchup Entertainment, which bought the rights for $50 million, the outlet reported. Ketchup then sold off some foreign rights to cut its own exposure before the film ever opened — a hedge that looked sensible when the studio that made the picture had already decided nobody wanted it.

The published figures are worth reading closely. As of Sunday the film stood at $54.7 million globally and $44.3 million domestically, per the Rentrak numbers IndieWire cited. Add the two and you're past $100 million, which is how the outlet framed it.

Warner Bros. has done this before. “Batgirl” was shelved in favor of a write-down, and “Coyote vs. Acme” carried a reported $70 million production cost against a premise — a cartoon coyote hiring a personal injury firm to sue the company whose anvils keep landing on him — that the studio judged too odd to sell.

The rest of the studio's year hasn't made that judgment look sharper. Per IndieWire:

• “The Bride!” — $23.9 million worldwide, against a $90 million budget.
• “Supergirl” — $126.4 million worldwide, against $180 million.
• “The End of Oak Street” — $120.6 million worldwide, against $85 million.

“Practical Magic 2,” the studio's most recent release, has taken $76.8 million in two weeks and cost close to that to make, which IndieWire says leaves it fighting for a profit. That's the contrast with 2025, when Warner Bros. had “Sinners” and “Weapons.”

Here's the comp nobody at the studio wants to run. A24 outgrossed Warner Bros. domestically this summer, largely on “Backrooms,” IndieWire reported: 5.5 percent of the market against the studio's 5 percent. In dollars that's $237 million for the indie and $165 million for the major.

“Coyote vs. Acme” would have closed some of that gap, had the studio kept it. It goes to digital platforms on September 28 at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern on September 29.

Source: indiewire.com, retrieved September 22, 2026.