Coyote vs. Acme Races to No. 2 Box Office With $15.4M Opening

Every once in a while, Hollywood delivers a genuine underdog story that has nothing to do with the plot on screen. This weekend belonged to Coyote vs. Acme, the Looney Tunes movie that Warner Bros. shelved back in 2023, wrote off for $30 million, and then quietly sold to an indie distributor nobody had on their season-pass radar. The internet rallied, the memes flew, and on Sunday the numbers landed: a $15.4 million domestic opening, good enough for the No. 2 spot at the box office — ahead of a brand-new Ridley Scott movie with a nine-figure budget.

The movie that refused to die

For anyone who has followed the saga, Coyote vs. Acme is less a film and more a symbol. Warner Bros. made it, loved it internally, then decided to write the whole $70 million production off as a tax loss — a move that made it one of the most talked-about shelved movies in modern studio history. Directors, animators, and fans protested loudly enough that the studio eventually sold the finished movie to Ketchup Entertainment rather than bury it entirely. Ketchup reportedly shelled out about $50 million for worldwide rights, more than rivals like Paramount and Netflix were willing to pay. The end result? A theatrical release that outperformed several movies backed by far larger marketing budgets.

It helps that the premise is tailor-made for audience affection. Directed by Dave Green and produced by Chris DeFaria and James Gunn, the movie hands Wile E. Coyote a long-overdue day in court: fed up with decades of faulty Acme gadgets, the cartoon predator hires a human lawyer and sues the giant corporation — while the Acme legal machine fights back with lawyers, loopholes, and the occasional exploding contract. Will Forte plays the attorney, John Cena menaces as the corporate villain, and Eric Bauza voices Wile E. Coyote. It is, in every way, a love letter to the slapstick lineage that dates back to the classic Looney Tunes shorts.

A $15.4M debut, and a $10M marketing miracle

The numbers are impressive for an indie release. Coyote vs. Acme pulled in roughly $15.4 million over its three-day opening weekend across 3,575 theaters, landing at No. 2 behind Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which banked another $22.2 million in its fifth frame. That opening represents a record for Ketchup Entertainment, blowing past the $3.1 million debut of the studio’s previous Warner Bros. project, The Day the Earth Blew Up — itself a rescued Looney Tunes picture that proved there was an audience for this kind of comeback story.

What makes the number remarkable is the math behind it. Deadline reports Ketchup spent only about $10 million on prints and advertising — a fraction of what a major studio would drop on a family film. And despite that lean budget, Coyote vs. Acme outgrossed the weekend’s flashiest new studio release, 20th Century’s The Dog Stars, which cost roughly $70 million to produce and opened to a comparatively soft $8 million. That is an indie distributor with a thrifty campaign beating a blockbuster-priced auteur project through sheer word of mouth.

Spider-Man keeps swinging, The Odyssey keeps climbing

Spider-Man’s fifth weekend wasn’t just a win — it was another milestone lap. Spider-Man: Brand New Day pushed its domestic total past $891 million, less than $10 million shy of becoming only the second movie ever to cross $900 million in North America, behind 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey refused to fall far, adding $14.3 million for a stateside cume of $563.8 million in its seventh week, while pushing Universal past $3 billion at the international box office this year — the first studio in 2026 to hit that mark. Combined, that summer blockbuster stranglehold is making this one of the most competitive years at the multiplex in recent memory. You can bet the Spider-Man franchise will stay front of mind through the fall.

What the win says about fan power

Look under the hood of Coyote vs. Acme’s opening and you find something studios have spent years trying to understand: the power of a passionate online fanbase. Ketchup leaned into that energy, with marketing integrations across the World Cup semifinals and final, WWE’s SummerSlam, the Little League World Series, and America’s Got Talent broadcasts, plus a first trailer that drew about 25 million views in its first 24 hours. The results echo a broader trend — audiences increasingly show up for “rescued” projects, whether it’s the fan-funding of indie hits or the communal celebration of a shelved gem finally seeing daylight. Critically, comparisons have already surfaced to the classic live-action-animation blend of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the gold standard for mixing toons and reality — and for Coyote vs. Acme to draw that comparison is no small compliment.

The critical reception only turbocharged the narrative. The hybrid live-action/animation movie opened to glowing reviews — an A CinemaScore, strong PostTrak word-of-mouth, and praise that framed it as one of the most purely entertaining releases of the year. That goodwill isn’t just warm fuzzies; it typically drives holdover business in the weeks to come, which is exactly what a distributor spending a tenth of a normal marketing budget needs to see.

A weekend of records

Look beyond the headlining duel and the frame was quietly historic on multiple fronts. Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t just chasing domestic history; its global haul has climbed past $2.3 billion, making it one of the highest-grossing films ever at the worldwide box office. The Odyssey, meanwhile, crossed $1.5 billion globally and anchored Universal’s run as the first studio of the year to pass the $3 billion mark at the international box office — the third time Universal has reached that milestone. For an end-of-summer weekend that usually signals the wind-down of blockbuster season, the sheer scale of the money moving through theaters is remarkable.

That context matters for understanding Coyote vs. Acme’s place in the story. It’s one thing for an indie import to crack double digits during a quiet frame; it’s another to do it while competing against two of the biggest movies of the year. The movie’s $15.4 million stands as proof that audience goodwill can cut through even the most crowded marketplace — a signal distributors will be studying well into next year.

The bigger picture at the multiplex

Sunday’s domestic chart shows the full summer landscape. Insidious: Out of the Further took fourth with $10.1 million, followed by The Dog Stars at $8 million. Further down, Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie continued its family-friendly run, and in the specialty space, Roadside Attractions and Saban’s R-rated horror comedy Buddy scored a No. 6 debut — marking the distributor’s best opening ever.

The broader takeaway for Hollywood is bracing: a movie that was written off, canceled, and sold to an indie upstart just beat a $70 million studio release at the box office, armed with a tenth of the marketing spend. If there’s a lesson in Coyote vs. Acme’s success, it’s that audiences reward conviction — and, apparently, a coyote’s tireless pursuit of justice. It’s a feel-good story worth remembering: never underestimate the power of a fanbase that refuses to let a good movie die.

Sources: Deadline box office reporting, August 30, 2026.