Never had Will Forte found himself so caught between art and commerce. The former Saturday Night Live star had received a call in November 2023 inviting him to a screening of the new Looney Tunes movie he’d just made, Coyote vs. Acme. Test audiences had loved it, and the producers were excited to finally share it with the whole cast. The very next day, like an anvil falling from the sky, Forte and his collaborators were crushed by the news that Warner Bros, the film’s studio, had decided to shelve the movie for a tax write-off.
The private screening still went ahead, though in the days leading up to it, Forte began to think, “It must not be as good as the producers thought. Maybe they were too close to it.”
That uncertainty evaporated quickly. In Coyote vs. Acme, Forte plays a hapless personal injury lawyer who helps Wile E. Coyote sue the Acme Corporation over their myriad products (rocket skates, bombs, catapults, anvils, etc.) that have backfired on him in his pursuit of the Roadrunner. Forte, and everyone else in the room, loved it, and as the lights went up, doubt and melancholy turned into frustration and confusion.
“We’re all kind of looking around at each other, like, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’” he tells Rolling Stone, adding. “You’re telling yourself, ‘I love this so much, this is so great, this is a movie my kids can see,’ and you forget, ‘Oh, right. This is a funeral screening.’”
The decision to can Coyote vs. Acme did cause an uproar. The creative team spoke out, as did industry folks who’d seen the film, like Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the directing team behind blockbusters like Project Hail Mary and the Spider-Verse movies. Warner Bros. made some hay about shopping the movie to another studio, but it wasn’t until March 2025 that the independent production and distribution company Ketchup Entertainment secured the rights. Nearly three years later, Coyote vs. Acme — which is every bit as delightful, thoughtful, and funny as those who were at the funeral screening insisted it was — will arrive in theaters on Aug. 28.
Like the 1988 classic, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Coyote vs. Acme boasts an expert mix of live action and animation. And also like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s a family-friendly comedy unafraid of weightier ideas. Embracing the Sisyphean conundrum that simmers beneath all pf Wile E. Coyote’s futile, slapstick efforts to catch the Roadrunner, it’s very much a movie about learning to fail. It’s also about the cost of “progress,” corporate greed and indifference to suffering as Forte’s character, Kevin Avery, and Wile E. Coyote stumble upon a larger Acme conspiracy. (The movie also stars John Cena as Acme’s lead lawyer, as well as Lana Condor as Kevin’s niece and legal partner.)
That Coyote vs. Acme was briefly shelved by not dissimilar forces is almost too on the nose. Forte isn’t sure if the film’s content had anything to do with its canning, but he points out that Looney Toons has “always been on the more subversive side,” and those who greenlit the film presumably read the script first.
“There are some people who argue — and they’re right — [Warner Bros.] are a business,” Forte acknowledges. “They can put their money in and do what they want with the product. But at the same time, why did you OK this movie in the first place? I get it if it’s like, ‘Oh, we thought it was gonna turn out like this, and you made a movie that was 10 times shittier than the script.’ But this is even better than the script. If you’re not gonna take a chance on your movie that is testing well and has your IP in it, what are you gonna take a chance on? Everything’s a crap shoot. Why was this the one?”
Forte is obviously delighted that Coyote vs. Acme is finally coming out, and during our conversation he spoke candidly about the movie’s long, winding road to release, as well as the unique experience of acting with cartoons in a live-action movie (and seeing himself on-screen with American icons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck). He also chatted about what he’s learned from bombing, the pleasures and challenges of doing clean comedy, and the sketch show he made with his mom and her best friend.
Tell me about your relationship with Looney Tunes?
I grew up watching Looney Tunes. I don’t remember a time in my life when they weren’t part of my life — that’s how early I started watching them. It was every day after school and on Saturday mornings. Then I went to college and kind of stopped watching cartoons, but I watched a couple of the old classics as I was about to start making the movie. I remember being so entertained as a kid, but I was just as entertained as an adult. They were so fun on so many different levels.
Watching them now, were you able to see how they might’ve shaped your sense of humor as a kid?
Oh, certainly. And I’ve never really thought about that in interviews where I’ve been asked about the different things that influenced me. I would always talk about Saturday Night Live and David Letterman, which are huge to me, but for sure the Looney Tunes must have been a huge part of my comedy brain formation… They’re so fun, so smart, and very subversive, too. You don’t realize that when you’re a kid.
What was it like doing the live action/animation stuff as a performer? Especially since the character you’re interacting with most, Wile E. Coyote, is not only not actually there, but famously mute.
I do a lot of voiceover work, and usually you’re just in a booth by yourself, so you’re kind of used to delivering dialog to nothing. But [director] Dave Green did this really smart thing where he brought in this guy Dave Barclay, who’s this master puppeteer — he was the guy behind Jabba the Hutt, he was one of the people doing the Venus flytrap in Little Shop of Horrors, [he did] Fraggle Rock. Just a ton of stuff. He brought this life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet, so during rehearsals, he’d be simulating the actions of Wile E. with the puppet, and then sometimes even for the first couple takes. Then the puppet would be removed, and they’d give me a tennis ball on a stick for an eye line. But by then you kind of had in your head what Wile E. would be doing.
Most of the time, it was just somebody reading the lines off-camera. Eric Bauza does most of the voices in the movie, and he might have come to visit [set]. God, he is so good. So when you finally get a chance to see the movie — because a lot of times you’re so focused on what you’re supposed to say and what direction you’re supposed to say it, that you forget: “Oh, that’s right, I’m in this scene with this iconic cartoon character.” When I finally got to see the movie, it was like I was watching everything for the first time. It was so exciting, and a really emotional experience getting to be up there with all these characters.
It’s been over four years since you filmed the movie at this point. Has it been easy to remember what the experience has been like now that you’re revisiting it?
It was a very unique experience with a lot of very fun, unique people, so it’s easy to remember. Dave Green was just unflappable. There was a dust storm that came, and we all had to shelter in the studio. It became a dangerous situation and meant having to reconfigure the work schedule, and [Green] just kept this even, calm demeanor the whole time. Oh, I got Covid! I was being so careful! Week two was about to start, John Cena is coming in, and we have these big courtroom scenes together, and I get Covid. So I had to miss a whole week, and once again, [Green] is totally unflappable.
It’s insane the amount of work that goes into having to do any movie, but to do something where you have to plan out this interaction of the animated and live world — it’s insane. There’s one scene where I’m walking to this car, and an animated boulder falls onto a real car and smashes the real car. They had to figure out how to make this car implode. We just shot it in so many different angles, and they had everything mapped out. And it’s so fun because the entire movie is filled with animated stuff interacting with live stuff. I’m so impressed with how they worked and made this thing that just would have made my mind explode.
So much of the movie is about failure and learning to fail. What have you learned from bombing?
I’ve had a lot of experience with this [laughs]. The main thing I learned about bombing is that if you are making the thing that’s close to your heart, you’re doing it to please yourself, and it bombs, it is so much easier to take than trying to make a movie to please other people. There have been a couple of things in my life where they were a little out of my control, and people tried to talk me into things because it would lure in this viewer. But it just spun out from what I thought the original idea was. It’s really hard to take it when something bombs like that.
But like MacGruber, when we made that movie and it bombed, that sucked to go through. But within a week or two, me, [co-writer] John [Solomon], and [co-writer, director] Jorma [Taccone], we just said, “We are proud of this. There’s nothing we could do. We made the movie we wanted to make.” And it made it so much easier. And it feels like that movie got a bit of a second look from people, so we remain proud of that movie. But that’s what I learned about bombing: if you’re making the movie you want to make, it’s so much easier to bomb than if you’re trying to please other people.
This is a pretty family-friendly project, and another thing I noticed you did recently was guest appearances on Studio C, which is a long-running, family-friendly sketch show out of Utah on BYUtv. What made you want to do that?
That started with this show called Show Offs, and Colin Jost’s brother Casey was the host of that show. It’s an all-improv show, and they basically talked me into coming out; it was just a quick, one-day thing, and I had a really fun experience. I met a couple of guys who are now really good friends, so I went back and did Studio C twice. Look, I have done a lot of dirty stuff in my life, and it was really fun to do things that were clean. That’s a challenge. They’re so good at writing these things that are really fun, absurd, and still tickle my funny bone, but that are totally clean. It’s a good reminder that you don’t need these crutches of dirty stuff all the time.
You’re also working on a sketch show with your mom. Can you share any updates on that?
We just put together a pretty smooth assembly of the first episode. It’s bonkers. I cannot wait for people to see this. I think we’re gonna try to put a sizzle reel together of the other five episodes, and then see if we could sell it on that. We’re delighted by how it’s coming together. My mom, Patti Forte, and [her friend] Carol Park — I think if we do this right, people are gonna go as them for Halloween. That’s my goal. They wear these specific sweatshirts that have their names on them, and I feel like we might see a couple of Patti Forte and Carol Parks Halloween characters if we’ve done our job right.
When I saw you were working on this, it reminded me of a great early Weekend Update bit you did where you sing a Mother’s Day song to your mom, about how you’ll miss her when she’s dead.
That’s so funny, I just happened to come across that a couple of days ago!
What was it like watching it back? Did your mom know the bit?
She did. So that’s the thing: my mom is not a trained actor, which is what makes this sketch show really fun. So when she came on [SNL], she did know the bit, and [during dress rehearsal] she comes out, and she was really overdoing it. Really overacting, being offended. I was really proud of her, because we gave her some notes, said you gotta tone it down, and then she played it perfectly on the air. You really believed that she was hearing it for the first time.
For the sketch show, is it just Patti and Carol, or did you get other folks in for it?
It follows them trying to write a sketch each [episode], and the very end is them doing the actual sketch with a bunch of my buddies from SNL or different comedy actors. Also, there’s a Zoom with a comedy writer in the middle of it. And all those people are pretty exciting names. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say who the people are, but they’re people who I think people will be excited to see.
