There are several ways to look at the Coyote vs. Acme opening this past weekend. The first is that the movie performed well past expectations and deserves a carrot in addition to a well-timed “what’s up doc?” for its effort. This picture was, after all, generally projected to earn between $11 and $14 million by industry prognosticators, yet wound up grossing $15.9 million in the U.S. and nearly $24 million worldwide in its opening weekend. That’s incredibly strong when you realize Ketchup Entertainment only spent about $10 million marketing it, a pittance compared to its estimated $70 million budget. It’s also nearly double Ridley Scott’s Dog Soldiers, which opened to $8 million in North America. This is definitely a victory lap for Ketchup, Looney Tunes fans, and just lovers of cinema in general. The movie Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav previously patted himself on the back as taking “courage” to bury for a tax write-off just outgrossed the debuts of four WB movies this year: Evil Dead Burn, They Will Kill You, The Bride!, and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. And it did this without a major studio’s marketing apparatus (and budget) behind it.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Nonetheless, the news is still a little bittersweet when coupled with the fact it’s still “merely” the third best Looney Tunes feature film debut, opening well behind Space Jam: A New Legacy when it launched with $31 million in July 2021 despite the world still being in the throes of the pandemic, and WB in the midst of a misjudged decision to release its entire 2021 slate day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max. It is also below the first Space Jam, which opened to $27.5 million way back in 1996, an astounding $58.5 million in 2026 dollars. It’s likewise beneath the adjusted opening of 1988’s seminal Who Framed Roger Rabbit and its $31.6 million gross when shifted for inflation.This is understandable. Ketchup Entertainment is an independent distributor and they picked up Coyote vs. Acme only after the studio whose logo is synonymous with Looney Tunes begrudgingly shopped the title following turbulent online backlash against the shelving of yet another nearly finished film—this one now generally recognized as a good time with Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang. Its qualified success, then, is yet one final, reassuring confirmation that the Looney Tunes have wallowed under misuse for decades.Once the crown jewel of not only Warners IP but also American animation in general (at least this side of Disney), the Looney Tunes were passed down from each generation to the next since the 1940s as an almost timeless entertainment and crash course in physical comedy and vaudeville patter banter. There are of course exceptions (hence Peppy Le Pew’s humorous cameo in Coyote vs. Acme), but even many of the dated elements have their charms. As Coyote vs. Acme director Dave Green previously told us, he first discovered who German-born character actor Peter Lorre was as a child by watching old, 1940s-era Looney Tunes shorts. And if you’ve seen his new movie, it seems safe to say he is determined to carry on that tradition.Admittedly a significant reason the Looney Tunes persisted through the decades is because of now dying or dead distribution models: cartoon shorts created to go in front of theatrical entertainments, or between double bills, in the 1930s through ‘50s were phased out after the rise of television. Yet those same shorts found new life on syndicated TV for decades before rising to renewed heights with mini-millennials thanks to nascent children-oriented cable channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon in the 1990s.But even before the collapse of the cable model in the 2010s, WB has systematically undermined and undervalued the Looney Tunes characters through multiple studio regimes and pivots. It wasn’t David Zaslav who quietly removed the Looney Tunes from cable rotations in favor of doomed attempts at reboots that misunderstood the anarchic joy of these characters in the 2000s. (Seriously, check out the 2005 opening for the superhero-tinged Loonatics Unleashed if you want to know what true millennial cringe looks like.) And before that, while the characters were still highly popular, the original Space Jam replaced the Marx Brothers-flavored chaos of the original Bugs Bunny shorts, or for that matter Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for an 88-minute Nike commercial where Bugs and the rest of the Toons are all BFFs suppliant to Michael Jordan.… Still, even that seems charming when compared to Space Jam 2, which not only continued Bugs, Daffy, and the rest as subservient to the brand of new(ish) NBA legend LeBron James, but they further became a vehicle to get LeBron opposite the IP that then-studio owners AT&T really cared about. Hence awkward sequences of Merrie Melodies’ Granny doing the Trinity kick from The Matrix and LeBron riding shotgun to the War Boys on Mad Max: Fury Road in a movie ostensibly meant for children. More bizarre was a climax besotted with sneaking in extras dressed as Beetlejuice and Droogs from the originally X-rated, 50-year-old A Clockwork Orange (1971).Yes, keeping old cartoon shorts from the FDR or Truman Years relevant was always going to be an uphill battle as time marched into the 21st century, but never mind the classics. By and large, WB executives seemed to neither care or understand the treasure trove legacy they inherited in the same way Bob Zemeckis did when he turned Who Framed Roger Rabbit into the highest grossing movie of 1988, or its executive producer Steven Spielberg when he successfully legacy sequel’d the characters (before that term existed) in the early 1990s with Tiny Toons.For most of the last 30 years, no one making Looney Tunes movies or TV shows seemed too concerned about the fundamentals, especially on the corporate side. But Coyote vs. Acme does. And despite having an extremely limited marketing budget while attempting to appeal to families with children who might never have heard the Road Runner say “beep, beep!” before this weekend, they were still able to do decent box office numbers.Now imagine what could be done with these characters if they got this kind of support more than once every three decades?The post Coyote vs. Acme Reception Confirms the Looney Tunes Have Long Deserved Better appeared first on Den of Geek.