Coyote vs. Acme (2026)
Coyote vs. Acme is a 2026 comedy movie directed by Dave Green, with a running time of 1h 43m. It stars Will Forte, Lana Condor and John Cena.
Wile E. Coyote kept the receipts. Rockets, anvils, spring-loaded boots, a whole mail-order catalogue of hardware that turned on him at the worst possible moment, all of it billed to one account at one company. After a lifetime of chasing the Road Runner on Acme equipment, the coyote hires a billboard attorney and takes the corporation to court.
The idea comes from Ian Frazier's 1990 New Yorker piece "Coyote v. Acme", a straight-faced legal filing written on behalf of a cartoon. Samy Burch wrote the screenplay from a story she built with James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, and Dave Green directs. The coyote stays animated while the lawyers and the courtroom are live action, so the comedy runs on the gap between cartoon physics and a legal system obliged to take them seriously.
Will Forte, Lana Condor, John Cena, Tone Bell, Martha Kelly and Luis Guzmán carry the human side of the case. Families get the physical comedy and the fantasy logic the shorts already taught them: painted tunnels, held breath, the long pause before the drop. Anyone who grew up treating Acme as a running joke gets to see the joke argued in front of a judge.
Official site
Cast
- Will Forte as Kevin Avery
- Lana Condor as Paige Avery
- John Cena as Buddy Crane
- Tone Bell as Sal Maltese
- Martha Kelly as Dottie Jones
- Luis Guzmán as Judge Troppogrosso
- P.J. Byrne as Bill Pellicanos
- John Early as Henry Heslop
- Nancy Linehan Charles as Cherry
- Kenneth Choi as Oscar Jeon
- Ernie Vigil as Talon
- Eric Bauza as Foghorn Leghorn / Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck / Porky Pig / Elmer Fudd / Tweety / Road Runner / Dr. Lorre (voice)
Similar movies
Explore Coyote vs. Acme guides
Coyote vs. Acme in our writing
- opening this week: Coyote vs. ACME Was Worth Saving
A few thoughts on Coyote vs. Acme
Aperture Science sells cheerful, dangerous equipment to a test subject who keeps using it anyway, which makes Portal and Portal 2 the closest thing games have to an Acme liability case, down to the corporate voice reassuring you as the floor opens. For slapstick invention on the page, Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump runs on gadgets that detonate in the inventor's face, and Crayon Shin-chan keeps that chaos at family scale. The Simpsons has spent decades aiming the same satire at corporations, with Itchy and Scratchy as its own tribute to Looney Tunes violence. "Weird Al" Yankovic's Alapalooza is the listening equivalent: cartoon-brained, and built with more craft than the jokes let on.
Comedies that play an absurd lawsuit straight
Coyote vs. Acme takes a cartoon grievance into a real courtroom, with Wile E. Coyote's mail-order receipts entered as evidence and a billboard attorney arguing the case. These share the same trick: handle a ridiculous claim with full procedural seriousness, from Ian Frazier's original filing to animated lawyers billing hours for clients in capes.
Wile E. Coyote and the Looney Tunes in games and TV
Wile E. Coyote has spent seventy years buying rockets on credit without once catching the Road Runner. Coyote vs. Acme hands him a lawyer instead. For more of the Warner Bros. menagerie, these run the same characters through Mega Drive platforming, mobile squad battles, and spinoff series built for a younger audience.
Talking-animal comedies pitched at adults and kids at once
Coyote vs. Acme mixes live action and animation, putting a cartoon predator at a defense table built for humans. These comedies work the same register: animal characters written with adult timing and kid-level slapstick in the same scene, including a woodpecker turned loose on real streets and a mammal metropolis with a police beat.
One person takes a corporation to court and you root for them
Wile E. Coyote's case rests on a paper trail: every anvil, rocket and spring-loaded boot billed to one account at one company. Coyote vs. Acme puts that ledger in front of a judge. These send other people up against a corporation that sold them something dangerous, from Grisham's outgunned attorneys to a cubicle comic strip to a lab still testing its hardware on you.