Not all underdogs are dogs. Coyote vs. ACME only in theaters August 28.
Tickets on sale now: https://coyotevsacme.com/
Wile E. Coyote has pulled a parachute rip cord and gotten a drawer full of silverware. He has set a big stack of TNT on the road and watched the detonator blow up instead of his target. And now, after decades of defective products, he is taking Acme to court. The premise of the upcoming live-action animated film sounds absurd on paper, but the trailer makes something unexpectedly moving out of it: the idea that the most relentlessly unlucky creature in cartoon history might finally get someone in his corner.
The case against Acme is framed with real stakes from the opening seconds. A lawyer lays it out plainly: Acme has knowingly been making dangerous products for decades. The company, for its part, denies all charges. What follows is the kind of courtroom-comedy energy where a settlement offer arrives with a quiet threat attached, and someone on the Coyote’s legal team is visibly sweating.
The argument that stopped the room
The trailer’s sharpest beat comes when someone asks the question out loud: ‘Is there anyone in the whole world who cares what happens to the coyote at all?’ The answer arrives immediately, and it lands harder than expected. His lawyer responds that the coyote is one of the most hard-working people he has ever met, that he would never think of quitting, and that everyone should be inspired by that. It is a genuinely earnest thing to say about a cartoon character who has spent his entire existence falling off cliffs, and the trailer earns it.
The comedy hasn’t been sacrificed for the sentiment, though. A subplot involving what appears to be an ‘air pantless modeling gig’ arrives with perfect timing. A witness stand exchange devolves into an argument about whether someone ‘saw’ or ‘thought they saw,’ and then whether the correct past tense is ‘saw’ or ‘sawed,’ and the bit keeps going long enough to become its own little absurdist event.
What the release window is asking audiences to believe
The film opens in theaters on August 28th. The campaign is leaning hard into the Coyote’s underdog appeal, and the trailer closes on a line that captures the whole tone: ‘I just want to scare Acme off.’ His legal team’s response is the kind of encouragement that sounds supportive until you remember who it is being directed at.
The silverware, still unaccounted for
Somewhere in an evidence locker, there is a parachute pack that produced a full set of cutlery instead of a canopy.
The coyote has been running and falling and detonating for longer than most audiences have been alive, and the trailer’s real trick is making the lawsuit feel like a natural next step rather than a gimmick. He would never think of quitting. August 28th is when everyone finds out if that persistence finally pays off.
