How 'Coyote vs. ACME' Broke All the Rules of Live-Action Looney Tunes Movies, and Got Away with It

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@ 29/08/2026

When Michael Jordan first meets Bugs Bunny in Space Jam, he reacts with star-studded confusion, which is probably how any human being would react to meeting the iconic cartoon rabbit in real life. But when Will Forte meets the beloved Looney Tune in Coyote vs. ACME, he's surprisingly nonplussed. That's because, in the new live-action/animated feature film, the Looney Tunes aren't global icons, they're just regular (cartoon) people living in our world.

"We really wanted to challenge ourselves to not acknowledge the Looney Tunes as an ensemble of characters," director Dave Green tells Polygon.

Coyote vs. ACME is now in theaters and enjoying rave reviews after a tumultuous path to release that included getting shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery and ultimately saved by a public outcry and independent film distributor Ketchup Entertainment. The movie tells the story of Wile E. Coyote, who is finally fed up with all of the faulty inventions he’s bought from the ACME Corporation and decides to sue ACME with the help of an unambitious Albuquerque lawyer named Kevin Avery (Forte). They face off against ACME lead counsel, Buddy Crane (John Cena). But as good as Forte, Cena, and the rest of the human cast are in this movie, the classic Looney Tunes characters are the real stars of Coyote vs. ACME, and a big part of that is the unique way the film uses them.

Foghorn is a blowhard who has a lot of swagger and arrogance and likes to talk down to people.

Unlike Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action — or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit — the Looney Tunes characters are not celebrities in Coyote vs. ACME. In those other movies, the Looney Tunes characters play famous versions of themselves that had starred in all those animated shorts from back in the day, but in Coyote vs. ACME, they’re just regular people living in a world populated by both humans and cartoon characters. In that sense, Coyote vs. ACME operates more like a movie-length Looney Tunes animated short than a live-action movie with Looney Tunes characters in it.

That choice may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a key element to what works so well about Coyote vs. ACME.

Ahead of Coyote vs. ACME's release, Polygon caught up with Green and the film's screenwriter Samy Burch to unpack their unique approach to making a Looney Tunes live-action movie, the thinking behind some of the film's most ingenious and hilarious Looney Tune casting choices, and some of the deep cut character Easter eggs that didn't make it into the final cut.

Warning: Mild Spoilers ahead for Coyote vs. ACME

Crafting the coyote

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the 1994 animated short “Chariots of Fur.” As the Road Runner zips by, the Coyote prepares to fire himself like an arrow from an actual, enormous bow.

At its most basic level, Coyote vs. ACME is a legal drama about an underdog (undercoyote?) taking on a big corporation. The decisions made about the world the characters live in had to be in service to a story all about Wile E. Coyote, who was the most important character to get right. For Green, that meant returning to the original shorts by Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, who created the Coyote and his eternal archnemesis, Road Runner.

"I rewatched all of them," Green says, “I made a big log of what happens in each short."

He also reached out to Pete Browngardt, creator of the 2020 revival series Looney Tunes Cartoons, who recommended two story artists, Ryan Kramer and David Gemmill, for the project. "They were incredible resources and really well trained," Green says. The team also included formally-trained and "absolutely brilliant" story artist Carlos Lutterbach.

"Together, we shaped a version of Wile E. who resembled the Wile E. from our imaginations," Green says. "To me, that was closer to the original Chuck Jones Coyote, who was a little conniving, and as much of a genius as he is a fool. He was really a haggard, lonely desert creature who was simply hungry and had this one very clear, singular want: to wake up every single morning and catch the Road Runner, no matter what got in his way.”

He was really a haggard, lonely desert creature.

Importantly, this meant the movie's main character couldn’t talk.

While Wile E. Coyote is mostly remembered for the non-speaking shorts with Road Runner, he also appeared in four shorts with Bugs Bunny, and in three of them, he spoke with a smooth, sophisticated, Mid-Atlantic accent. These were also directed by Jones, and the first of them, 1952’s Operation: Rabbit, was just the character’s second appearance. Regardless, Green didn’t want to use that version of the character.

“It just didn't feel like the right version of canon to us to have Wile E. speak," Green says. "I was always personally pretty disturbed when he spoke. His voice is pretty haunting. And we liked the challenge of tying one hand behind our back and figuring out, ‘Okay, can we do this fencing match with a nonverbal character?’"

One trick Green and his team employ in Coyote vs. ACME is the small signs with handwritten messages that the character often uses in Looney Tunes shorts to convey his feelings, though they couldn't lean on that one trick too much either. Instead, Green turned to other famous non-speaking protagonists for inspiration.

"We looked at a lot of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin for inspiration and we thought about what we could do with this character who's been built for 80 years as the quintessential silent film actor. Honestly, I felt like we didn't need the silent film actor to talk.”

'Casting' the Looney Tunes

In keeping with the Coyote being an underdog, he is also not famous. He’s not “Wile E. Coyote, star of Looney Tunes shorts.” The same goes for the other characters, too. In a way, Coyote vs. ACME works as a straightforward legal comedy, and the Looney Tunes characters are all cast into the roles best suited for the story and for their individual characters. For example, the self-important head of the ACME Corporation is played by Foghorn Leghorn, who always had the arrogant attitude of a rich tycoon, even if he was just a loudmouth farm animal.

"We wanted to see these characters playing roles, but keeping their personas,” Green says. "So Daffy is a bit crazy, and Foghorn is a blowhard who has a lot of swagger and arrogance and likes to talk down to people. Porky is the helpless everyman.”

Green gives much of the credit for “casting” the characters to his screenwriter, Burch, whose mother Jackie Burch was the legendary casting director behind classic '80s and '90s movies like The Breakfast Club and Die-Hard.

"Samy grew up in a casting household and it's part of her DNA,” Green says.

Burch describes the "casting" process for Coyote vs. ACME as something more akin to assigning roles to a well-oiled theater troupe or a classic Hollywood production.

“I remember Dave and I having this conversation about thinking of the Looney Tunes as the performers on contract at the studio," she says. "This is the theater company that we have to pull from. We don't want to go against their spirits, so they can play these roles."

There's an anti-bird thing going on.

Beyond their established personas, however, one other factor helped Burch and Green decide where to place certain characters in the film.

"Because the Coyote’s nemesis is the Road Runner, there's an anti-bird thing going on," she says. "So Tweety and Foghorn are villains, and a lot of the last names on that side of the table are birds.”

(The human cast includes John Cena and P.J. Byrne as ACME corporate lawyers Buddy Crane and Bill Pelicanos, respectively.)

Figuring out what roles the story needs first, and then casting the Looney Tunes into a lot of those roles, allowed for some surprisingly deep cuts.

“In an earlier draft, the scientist at the beginning was a human. Then at a certain point we were like, ‘Oh, this would be a great role for Dr. Lorre,’” Burch says, referring to the caricature version of actor Peter Lorre, who appeared in a variety of classic Looney Tunes shorts.

Sadly, not all of those deep cuts made the final version of the movie.

“There were a few drafts where Michigan J. Frog had kind of a supporting role,” Burch says. “He was running a bar near the law firm. But it's that kind of thing where you go, ‘Okay we don't need this location,’ so it fell by the wayside. No one's going to be shoehorned in here. It's only for the purpose of this story.”

They had to be careful with the bigger characters, particularly Bugs Bunny, who plays a small but integral role as a mysterious informant for the heroes.

“There was a feeling that you don't want to cast someone so big they pull focus from the lead,” says Burch. “If Bugs Bunny is Tom Cruise, we want to be very sparing with how he's used in the film, so that it doesn’t feel like a big ensemble. This is Wile E.’s movie.”

The movie’s funniest casting choice, however, is Elmer Fudd, who shows up late in the movie as a senator in a congressional hearing.

“It’s low-hanging fruit because Elmer Fudd does feel like a senator to me,” says Burch. “He was always there. Once we knew we were headed towards a congressional hearing, it was like, ‘Oh, well, we'll have Elmer Fudd and like, six humans.’ That just always felt funny.”

The voice of the Looney Tunes

The way Coyote vs. ACME finds a natural place for so many beloved characters is incredibly impressive, and it becomes all the more remarkable once you realize most of those characters are voiced by the same person.

“We were lucky because we had Eric Bauza, who's a really great actor,” says Burch.

Back in the classic Looney Tunes shorts, nearly every classic character was originated and voiced by the late Mel Blanc, and in Coyote vs. ACME, Bauza voices 10 of those characters and nails every one of them. He’s so good that you accept them as the same characters they were 80 years ago, just like the world in Coyote vs. ACME can accept a Foghorn Leghorn as a CEO, Elmer Fudd as an elected official, and Wile E. Coyote as a hero.

Coyote vs. ACME is in theaters now.