Warner Bros.’s Coyote Vs. Acme fiasco attracts congressional attention

It’s not an uncommon sight in any Road Runner cartoon for Wile E. Coyote to become the victim of his own schemes. His flagrant self-owning behavior often sees the relentlessly beleaguered desert predator a casualty of a bomb he set, a tunnel he painted, or a cliff he sawed. Ironically, that’s the kind of situation Mr. Coyote’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, finds itself in.

After last week’s public relations fiasco, during which Warner Bros. Discovery alienated filmmakers, film fans, and industry leaders with its anti-art decision to shelve its completed Looney Tunes movie Coyote Vs. Acme, the company reversed the course. The concession: WBD would allow the filmmakers to shop the movie around, giving another studio the opportunity to release a film featuring one of WB’s most beloved and seminal characters. It’s like if Disney allowed Netflix to do a Mickey Mouse movie, or a studio removed the words “HBO” from a streaming service, or a social media company changed the name Twitter to “X.”

The fallout from Warner’s hunt for some sweet tax write-off money isn’t over yet because Texas Representative Joaquín Castro is asking the Justice Department and the FTC to look into the matter, comparing WBD’s “tactic” to “burning down a building for the insurance money.”

“The WBD tactic of scrapping fully made films for tax breaks is predatory and anti-competitive,” Castro tweeted. “As the Justice Department and @FTC revise their antitrust guidelines, they should review this conduct. As someone remarked, it’s like burning down a building for the insurance money.”

Per The Hollywood Reporter, this isn’t the first time Castro has gone after WBD with what he calls “anticompetitive practices.” In an April 7th letter signed by Castor and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, which was a follow-up to a 2021 letter of the initial merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, the two senators accused WBD of “hollowing out an iconic American studio” by canceling Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, and the HBO series Whistleblower, which WB purchased following an intense bidding war and canceled after the merger.

“The damage to content creators whose projects are canceled in deep development and post-production cannot be overstated,” he wrote. “Such cancellations stain these projects, making them less appealing and marketable to other buyers — consumers will likely never be able to watch shows purchased then canceled by WBD. WBD’s conduct amounts to a de facto ‘catch and kill’ practice, vastly limiting consumer choice.”

The difference between Coyote and the other canceled projects is Coyote is done, in the can, and people have seen and praised it. In the days since the cancelation, members of the film community have begun championing the movie as well as reportedly canceled meetings with Warner Bros. Discovery. Meanwhile, despite its attempts to blow out the lit fuse, Warner Bros. Discovery’s face is covered in ash, making for a grotesquely humorous punchline to a deeply depressing situation.