WHAT A WILE E. SCHEME
Movie-nix anger
It’s a movie you’ll likely never see — and that’s loony.
Will Forte finally watched his shelved movie “Coyote vs. Acme” and said that “it’s incredible” in an open letter/rant he posted to his colleagues on the doomed flick.
“I know a lot of you haven’t gotten a chance to see our movie,” he said. “And, sadly, it’s looking like you never will.
“When I first heard that our movie was getting ‘deleted,’ I hadn’t seen it yet,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum wrote. “So I was thinking what everyone else must have been thinking: this thing must be a hunk of junk.
“But then I saw it. And it’s incredible.”
The movie, starring Forte, is based on a satirical 1990 New Yorker article in which Wile E. Coyote sues the Acme Corporation over its backfiring products that kept him from capturing the Road Runner in the Looney Tunes cartoons.
But in November, the studio behind it, Warner Bros., said it would shelve “Coyote vs. Acme” for a tax write-off.
Amidst fan outrage, Warner Bros. agreed to shop the movie around elsewhere. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter Amazon offered between $40 million and $45 million to snap it up but that Warner Bros. dismissed the offer.
Then, last week, Warner Bros. Discovery said in an earnings filing that it wrote off $115 million after abandoning movies in the third quarter of 2023, as part of a “strategic realignment plan.”
‘Should be seen’
Forte was having none of it. “Super funny throughout, visually stunning, sweet, sincere, and emotionally resonant in a very earned way,” he wrote. “As the credits rolled, I just sat there thinking how lucky I was to be a part of something so special. That quickly turned to confusion and frustration.
“This was the movie they’re not going to release?
He noted that “the people who paid for this movie can obviously do whatever they want with it.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like it (I f--king hate it). Or agree with it,” he said, calling the flick “a movie that should be seen, but won’t.”
Forte signed off by mocking the Warner Bros. catchphrase: “That’s all folks.”