This one’s for all you real ’40s kids out there. You know what I’m talking about. Yes, that hot, cutting-edge property Looney Tunes is back in fashion again, merely 15 years after Looney Tunes: Back in Action and a scant 22 years after Space Jam hit theaters. (I think the fact that only seven years passed between those two movies is the real shocker here.)
Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. is currently developing a feature-length animated film based on their legendary Looney Tunes property, but it isn’t for one of the heavy hitters you might have expected. Coyote vs. Acme — the working title — will be produced by Lego Batman director Chris McKay, and Jon and Josh Silberman have been hired to write the script. The sibling screenwriters previously have credits that include Deadbeat and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
While Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are certainly household names and pop culture icons in their own right, they’re hardly on the “get a funny shirt of them dressed like rappers at Walmart” level of iconic. Wile E. Coyote isn’t Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Taz, or even Tweety Bird. Wile E. and the Road Runner made their debut in 1949 in a short called, believe it or not, “Fast and Furry-ous.” Their various shorts together always followed a similar formula (in fact, there were hard and fast rules), but it was a formula that worked.
There’s no telling just yet what the story of the film will involve, but based on the Coyote vs. Acme title, I would go out on a limb and guess we might be dealing with a Grinch-style tale of the poor Coyote lashing out at a massive mail-order conglomerate that has been misleading and maiming him for decades. Hey, maybe this is the perfect age for a thinly-veiled anti-Amazon movie! You go, Coyote.
