Will Forte is not over it. And honestly, he shouldn't be.
In a new interview, the Saturday Night Live veteran opened up about Warner Bros.' decision to shelve Coyote vs. Acme—the completed film he starred in that the studio decided to bury for tax purposes. His feelings? "Extreme frustration, fiery frustration, a lot of anger."
That's the appropriate response when a studio treats your finished work as a writeoff rather than art.
For those who missed this saga: Warner Bros. fully produced Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action/CGI hybrid featuring Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Corporation. The film reportedly tested well. People who saw it said it was good. And then Warner Bros., under the leadership of David Zaslav, decided to cancel its release entirely and claim it as a tax writeoff.
This wasn't a case of a bad movie being quietly dumped. This was a strategic business decision that treated a completed film—one that employed hundreds of people and represented months of creative work—as nothing more than a line item on a balance sheet.
Forte's anger is justified because this represents something genuinely insidious about the current entertainment landscape. Studios have always killed projects in development. That's part of the business. But canceling completed films for tax purposes? That's new, and it's corrosive to the entire creative ecosystem.
What message does it send to artists when their finished work can be vaporized not because it's bad, but because some accountant determined the tax benefit outweighs the potential revenue? How do you maintain creative integrity in an industry that treats art as fungible?
The Coyote vs. Acme situation became a rallying point for industry frustration with Warner Bros.' post-merger strategy. The studio tried to shop the film to other distributors after the backlash, but ultimately nothing came of it. The movie remains in limbo, unseen by audiences, existing only as a cautionary tale about corporate consolidation.
