Brian Reed: Hey. Good to be here. So — the reviews dropped.
Eliza Ward: They did. August 12. I honestly wasn't sure this day was going to arrive.
Brian Reed: Right, because — okay, let me just say the plain-language version of what happened here. Warner Bros. finished a movie, decided a tax write-off was worth more than a release, and then Ketchup Entertainment paid fifty million dollars to prove them wrong. That's the whole story, yeah?
Eliza Ward: That's confirmed. Will Forte, John Cena, animated Looney Tunes characters, live-action hybrid — fully completed in 2023, shelved, now opening August 28.
Brian Reed: And it's directed by Dave Green, written by Samy Burch — who's Oscar-nominated — based on, of all things, a 1990 New Yorker piece by Ian Frazier imagining Wile E. Coyote actually suing the Acme Corporation. That's the premise. That a studio spent real money on and then tried to erase.
Eliza Ward: Wait — and the reviews are split. So we still don't know if Ketchup's fifty-million-dollar bet lands.
Brian Reed: But the split reviews — that's actually where the story gets complicated, because we still haven't answered the prior question. Why did WB sell instead of just burying it like Batgirl?
Eliza Ward: Right — and Batgirl is the thing people keep glossing over. Shelved August 2022, ninety million dollars plus in production costs, and it is still gone. Nobody bought it. Nobody rescued it.
Brian Reed: It's just... gone.
Eliza Ward: Still gone. So the question is — actually, let me put it more precisely — what made Coyote vs. Acme different enough that a buyer appeared? And I think the honest answer is Eric Bauza.
Brian Reed: The voice of Wile E. Coyote publicly came out against the shelving?
Eliza Ward: Publicly, vocally, by name. Which — I mean, Batgirl didn't have that. Nobody from Batgirl was out there making noise in a way that kept it alive in conversation for two years. This one stayed warm because the people attached to it wouldn't let it die quietly.
Brian Reed: But here's what I'm not sure about — did that backlash actually change David Zaslav's financial math, or did it just keep the film visible long enough for Ketchup to notice it? Because those are really different things.
Eliza Ward: That's the distinction I'd land on, yeah. Zaslav's cost-cutting mandate drove the original shelving — seventy million dollar production, taken as a write-off. The backlash probably didn't reverse that calculus. What it did was keep the IP from going cold. So when Ketchup came in at fifty million, there was still a conversation to buy into.
Brian Reed: So it's less 'WB changed its mind' and more 'WB got an exit that the backlash accidentally made possible.'
Eliza Ward: Yeah, and that 'exit' framing is actually where the take going around right now gets it completely wrong. The thing I keep seeing is — Ketchup's purchase proves there's a functioning secondary market for shelved studio IP. And no. That's not what this shows.
Brian Reed: Okay — why not? Isn't some gap normal in any negotiation?
Eliza Ward: Not at this scale. Warner Bros. set the ask at seventy-five to eighty million. Ketchup paid fifty. That's a twenty-five to thirty million dollar gap on a fifty-million-dollar deal. That's not haggling, that's — imagine a completed album sitting in a label's vault. Label prices it at ten million, sells it for seven, two years later. You don't call that the music industry discovering a healthy resale market. You call it proof the label never knew what the record was worth.
Brian Reed: And both things can't be true simultaneously. WB already took the write-off on seventy million in production costs — and then priced the sale like the IP was still worth studio money.
Eliza Ward: Exactly — those two positions contradict each other. You wrote it off, then tried to recoup eighty million. Pick one.
Brian Reed: So — hang on — what does it tell us that Ketchup was willing to land at fifty at all? Because they're not naive. They'd already picked up The Day the Earth Blew Up, the 2024 Looney Tunes film, so they had a real read on what that IP ecosystem looks like at the distributor level.
Eliza Ward: Right, and that's the part people miss. Ketchup wasn't walking in blind — they had an existing relationship with Looney Tunes IP from that deal. They knew the lane. But then they sat on a completed film for two years before getting it to theaters. That's not infrastructure. That's a buyer who made the acquisition and then had to build the release around it from scratch.
Brian Reed: So they're not a pioneer. They're a — I mean, 'scavenger' sounds harsh, but they spotted distressed IP, had a pre-existing in, and made a bet on the comeback narrative being worth the discount.
Eliza Ward: One-time arbitrage, not a model. And whether that bet actually pays — that's what August 28 settles. Split reviews, cause-célèbre loyalty, Looney Tunes nostalgia — whether those three things add up to real box office is the number that'll tell us if the next shelved project has any hope of following this path.
Brian Reed: And the thing that makes August 28 a real test — not just 'time will tell' noise — is that the result is going to be read three completely different ways depending on who's watching. Deadline called it a well-constructed comedy with an ingenious premise. A Yahoo trade outlet called it Warner Bros.' most entertaining film of 2026 and the best live-action toon hybrid since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That's a big claim. But Variety said — and this is the notable one — the 'fizz of anarchy' the film is going for is not fully achieved. So which review is the audience buying a ticket to see?
Eliza Ward: That's — yeah. Because those are three genuinely different films being described.
Brian Reed: Right. And the Who Framed Roger Rabbit comparison is actually doing a lot of structural work there — that's the only real format precedent for what Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation in a live-action courtroom even looks like. So if that comparison holds, you have a nostalgia ceiling and a quality floor. But if Variety's read is the accurate one—
Eliza Ward: Hold on — because even a strong opening doesn't actually answer the question. If Ketchup paid fifty million and the film makes eighty million domestically, we still don't know if that's quality driving it, or the rescue narrative, or just Looney Tunes brand loyalty. The number lands the same either way.
Brian Reed: No, that's — I mean, that's what stands out to me. This is me guessing, but if the opening weekend is front-loaded and then drops sixty percent in week two, that's cause-célèbre audiences showing up for the story of the film surviving, not the film itself. A quality picture holds. A novelty event doesn't.
Eliza Ward: Week-two drop rate. That's the actual signal.
Brian Reed: And it matters for the next shelved project because — actually, let me put it plainly. If Dave Green's film holds, some producer right now has a case to bring to WB Discovery about whatever's sitting in their vault. If it craters after opening weekend, Ketchup's bet looks like a one-off made possible by Will Forte, John Cena, Eric Bauza, and two years of very loud fans — not a market.
Eliza Ward: And Warner Bros. Discovery gets to quietly claim the write-off math was right all along. That's the part that should bother people.
Brian Reed: And that's the part I can't get past — Batgirl is still sitting there as the counter-example. Ninety million dollars, never released, nobody bought it. Coyote vs. Acme reaching theaters is still, as of today, genuinely rare. Which means — I mean, is Ketchup a pioneer, or did they just get lucky once because the cause-célèbre factor made this IP unusually readable?
Eliza Ward: I don't think August 28 answers that cleanly. Even if the number is good — even if it's eighty, ninety million — the cause-célèbre element is so baked in that you can't strip it out. Will Forte, John Cena, two years of noise. The next shelved film probably doesn't come with that.
Brian Reed: So the data point is kind of... unreadable.
Eliza Ward: It's one data point where the conditions can't be replicated. That's not a market. That's an event. We'll know the number August 28. We may not know what it means for the next thing sitting in Warner Bros. Discovery's vault.
Brian Reed: Scavenger who got lucky, or pioneer who got there first — and we genuinely don't know yet. That's where this sits.
