According to its own myth, the entertainment industry is something greater, more poetic and noble than just a great money-making tool. Our favorite movies and TV shows—of Hollywood “product”, if we Right call them that—the sum total of our cultural imagination, our collective dreams that fascinate and inspire.
Unfortunately, that feeling rarely seems to last once studios start looking at their balance sheets. Just ask the filmmakers behind Coyote vs Acme.
Last November, the bundle And Rolling Stone report that Warner Bros. Discovery plans to hit shelves Coyote vs Acme—an animated/live-action comedy starring Will Forte and Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote—in exchange for tax exemptions. A few days later, the bundle announced that, thanks to public outcry, the studio had changed its stance and invited filmmakers to pitch their projects to potential buyers. However, by February, the same publication reported that the company wants $75-80 million for the film and has turned down “handsome” offers from companies including Netflix, Amazonand Paramount without allowing them to make counter-offers.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, a representative for Warner Bros. Discovery said Coyote vs Acme has not been shelved and is still available for repurchase. They said the film cost the studio about $70 million and the studio has not received a tax exemption for the film. The representative added that none of the dozens of distributors who viewed the film for possible acquisition had submitted a formal offer. A knowledgeable source confirmed to The Daily Beast that Amazon MGM Studios has not made a formal bid; Representatives for Netflix and Paramount have not responded to multiple requests for comment.
For those who need a quick refresher: When a company makes a product that it later decides not to sell, it can record the cost of making that product as a loss (partial or total) because tax purposes. Sanjay Sharma, Adjunct Professor of Finance and Business Economics at USC's Marshall School of Business, told The Daily Beast that a company cannot claim a loss on something that is still for sale. Theoretically, a company maybe Declare a loss on a product, release it a year later and pay taxes afterward, but that's “rare” because, frankly, the IRS would hate it, Sharma said.
“If you're writing it down to zero, then suddenly next year you can't write it down again,” Sharma said. “The IRS will say you are abusing the write-in privilege.”
When asked if Warner Bros. Discovery has the ability to write Coyote vs Acme in the future, the representative only replied that it was still available for repurchase.
As one can imagine, the team devoted many years to its fabrication Coyote vs Acme—originally scheduled to hit theaters on July 25, 2023, before being pushed back indefinitely to make room for Barbie—it's heartbreaking to see their movie in limbo. In February, star Will Forte addressed the issue one way social media posts, in which he wrote, “I hate it.” In his own post, director Dave Green wrote that he “beyond destruction.” While speaking with The Daily Beast, executive producer Carsten HW Lorenz called the mess “incomprehensible.”
Like most workers in Hollywood, Lorenz considered his work to have much deeper meaning than a business transaction. “You put so much love in [a film],” he said, “and years of work.” Twice during our conversation, he compared the filmmaking process to giving birth.
“You feed it every day, every hour, until, finally, it can walk and go to school,” he continued, “and then, on graduation day—when you think 'Okay, now The child is about to go out now. come into the world and shine'—it will be killed.”
On its face, what happened to the Coyote vs Acme seems as ridiculous as Looney Tune. But anyone who pays even the slightest attention to what's happening in the industry and at Warner Bros. Discovery has known since its merger in 2022 that the move was just part of a growing trend.
While Coyote vs Acme There's still a small fighting chance, but Warner Bros. Discovery really put it on hold Bat girl And Scoob! Haunted vacationtwo movies are scheduled to launch on Max in 2022. By the third quarter of 2022, the company said in a report SEC filing that they have amassed “approximately $2.0 – 2.5 billion” from “content decline and development deletion,” which THR reportedly will likely not include both films. Meanwhile, streaming platforms including Warner Bros. Discovery's Max, Disney+, HuluAnd Supreme+ spent past years remove content to help balance their books.
However, there is something about Coyote vs Acme Failure feels different – darker.
First, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote are two of the Warner Bros. the most iconic characters. This movie stars a SNL legendary, and, according to insiders who spoke to The Wrap in February, it's tested through the roof. If Warner Bros. Discovery feels comfortable with the possibility of disappearing one of its hit properties, who's to say that won't become the norm across Hollywood?
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX) has been covering the industry for the past five years. In spite of Coyote vs Acme Far from his sole focus, the congressman admitted in a recent interview with The Daily Beast that the film's unceremonious handling could herald a bleak future for WBD and the industry as a whole, if it follows.
“People for generations have known these characters and it has proven well with audiences,” Castro said. “If you're an executive at Warner Brothers Discovery and you can't sell that to the public… I don't know if you should. [in charge of] a film department. Or a movie business.”
Some audiences ABOVE X has proposed an attractive solution, at least in discarded films such as Bat girl And Scoob! be involved. If studios want to shut down their own productions in exchange for a tax break essentially funded by us, the people, then shouldn't the works in question at least be in the public domain so that everyone Can anyone see them? Especially considering the executives behind these decisions are raking in such huge sums of money (and, in some high-profile cases, ascending) salary.
While this proposal may sound appealing at first, there are clearly some pitfalls. For one thing, the workers behind these shuttered movies still won't get the rest if their work is made available for free. Regardless, Danielle Garno — a partner at Holland & Knight, and co-chair of the firm's Entertainment Law Group — poured an Acme-sized bucket of cold water on the idea.
From a legal perspective, Garno told me, studios can do pretty much what they want with the product they own. “They could burn it or launch it everywhere.” So the idea of the public domain is essentially a non-starter.
“Without an act of Congress, that won't happen,” Garno said.
Then! What do you say, Congressman?
Congressman Castro, who has his eye on Warner Bros. Discovery has for years acknowledged that Washington doesn't always pay as much attention to Hollywood as it should. So he urges anyone interested in what's happening with products like Coyote vs Acme to reach out to their state representatives.
“The glitz and glamor of Hollywood really insulates it from heavy congressional scrutiny,” Castro said. Although lawmakers don't say it often, he added, they tend to treat issues surrounding the entertainment industry as somewhat “soft”—not as important as issues like immigration. housing, health care or employment.
“Those are obviously extremely important issues,” Castro said. “But at some point, you should also find out what the big American industry is.”
Castro first started following Hollywood about five years ago as part of a push Latinx representation in the media. IN December 2021He joined dozens of lawmakers in urging the Justice Department to consider the proposed merger of Warner Bros. Discovery on antitrust grounds — an issue he and three fellow lawmakers reiterated in a follow-up letter. April last year that shows how their concerns became real after the merger took place.
“I don't know who won because of the merger,” Castro said. “The prices of their packages have gone up. Stock prices have fallen. Thousands of people have been fired. They removed the content. That hurts the creative world in America.”
““Thousands of people have been fired. They removed the content. That hurts the creative world in America.””
Content pricing has devastated the industry. Financially, workers lose out on leftover money when a movie never comes out, and from a reputational perspective, the damage can be real.
Castro recalls some of the comments studio executives made about it Bat girl when they first canceled it in the summer of 2022. DC Studios co-president Peter Safran said he saw the movie and called it “cannot be released.” Warner Bros. CEO Discovery David Zaslav speak that the film's cancellation was necessary to “protect the DC brand.”
“I think saying those things and not even letting anyone see or verify what you're saying is especially crass,” Castro told me. At another point, he calls what happened to Bat girl, Coyote vs Acme, and other disappearing films “a cancer is spreading throughout the entertainment industry.”
Castro and Garno agree that moves like this will only become more common if left unchecked. Both emphasized that Hollywood's unions would have to negotiate the issue with studios as their contracts were about to expire. (The behind-the-scenes workers union IATSE was back at the bargaining table as we spoke, as were the Teamsters and Hollywood Basic Crafts.) Until then, as Garno said, studios are free to do whatever they want with finished films. —including throwing them in the trash.
However, Lorenz has not given up yet. Even if Coyote vs AcmeHis prospects aren't exactly rosy, he still hopes that it can somehow escape this strange corporate purgatory and see the light of day.
A classic Wile E. Coyote short.
©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
After all, what kind of industry is this if even movies like this — that somehow pass Hollywood strictures, actually accomplish what they set out to do, have the “smell of success”? —can disappear? And he wondered, who would want to partner with Warner Bros. Discovery if they go through with this for no other reason than “corporate greed?” (“Is there a better word for it?” Lorenz asked.)
No, that can't be the end. That can't be the story that Warner Bros. Discovery—and Hollywood in general—wants to tell about them.
So Lorenz is holding out hope. He is protecting himself Coyote vs Acme spoilers, just in case people can one day see the movie he produced. He is fondly recalling being stopped at Zagreb Airport in Croatia while wearing an Acme T-shirt to take selfies with 12 customs officers who couldn't stop saying, “Meep meep!” And he's trying his best to understand why Warner Bros. Discovery didn't bother to throw this movie on its streaming service and see what happens, given how well it tested.
However, it's really impossible to escape that terrible feeling. For this producer, at least, “it was like someone had died.”
