Coyote vs Acme: The Movie Warner Bros Tried to Kill America

By Hamza Ali•Thursday, October 8, 2026•2 min read

You can't keep a good coyote down. Coyote vs. Acme the Looney Tunes movie Warner Bros. famously shelved for a tax write-off and is now the most pirated movie in America, topping TorrentFreak's weekly chart for the week ending October 5, 2026.

From Tax Write-Off to #1 (Sort Of)

For those who missed the saga: Warner Bros. completed the live-action/animated hybrid film. The starring John Cena and centered on Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation. Then decided to shelve it entirely in one of the most controversial cost-cutting moves in recent Hollywood history. The backlash was enormous, from fans and filmmakers alike.

The film eventually escaped the vault, and audiences have been catching up ever since — by any means necessary, apparently. It now sits at #1 on the piracy chart with a 7.5 IMDb rating, ahead of The End of Oak Street and Runner.

What This Says About the Audience

Here's the irony Warner Bros. has to sit with: the movie they decided wasn't worth releasing is the movie people most want to watch right now. Piracy numbers aren't box office, but they are a signal and the signal is that shelving completed films for accounting reasons creates exactly the kind of resentment that drives people to torrents.

My take: Coyote vs. Acme has become a folk hero of a movie. Every download is a tiny protest vote. If WB ever needed proof that audiences wanted this film, here it is in the most backhanded metric possible.