While Spider-Man made waves in the summer box-office swinging past two billion dollars in a measly 17 days, it’s the R-rated Nolan epic that defined the summer. Despite the film being based on a three thousand year old poem, its commitment to IMAX cameras filming every second and practical effects have allowed the film to feel like a breath of fresh air among the webbed spandex and yellow minions who seemingly revisit the theatres every other year. The Odyssey was a gamble, albeit a logical one, where Universal had to shell out $250 million dollars on a three hour R-rated movie based on a story with no familiar IP. Universal’s trust in Nolan paid off once again as The Odyssey grossed over $1.5 billion, stomping Nolan’s previous success of Oppenheimer’s equally impressive $975 million.

Speaking of Nolan’s prior successes, Warner Bros. questionable decisions throughout the 2020s begins with Nolan’s financial failure. After Tenet failed to bring audiences out of their homes during COVID, they initiated Operation Popcorn throughout 2022: allowing all their films to release on their streaming service the exact same day they released in theatres, effectively killing its box office prospects and impacting cast/crew salaries, in an effort to draw people to their platform. The following two years also led to several completed films to be scrapped for a tax write off, due to Warner Bros. executives considered them unlikely to profit. One of those films was Coyote vs ACME, a project set to release in 2023 but written off for a $50 million tax cut as Warner Bros. wanted to play it safe after deeming the courtroom comedy with Looney Tunes at the forefront as a financial risk. A smaller studio, Ketchup Studios, bought the rights to the film hence why on of the greatest examples of meta commentary was finally released.

Coyote vs ACME is a clever concept on paper, Wile E. Coyote takes Acme to court after providing him faulty devices that have hindered his chances at catching the Road Runner for decades. He hires a law firm to take on the billion dollar company, while conjuring up his next hairbrained scheme to catch the Road Runner once and for all. It’s easy to conjur up connections to ACME with Warner Bros. as the billion dollar company that buys out their opposition, even casting John Cena (the yes-man for any generic studio blockbuster) as the lawyer representing the defendant but the roots of this film go beyond “multi-billion dollar company equals bad”.

Referenced several times in the film (despite Nolan’s The Odyssey not mentioning this moment in Odysseus’s journey) the film Coyote vs ACME is the tale of Sisyphus. There aren’t many guarantees in life besides death, taxes, and Wile E. Coyote failing to capture his nemesis: The Road Runner. For over 70 years, Coyote has tried to catch the speedy bird and the film feels like a celebration of that running series. With references to many classical contraptions set by Mr Coyote himself, all coming to the precipice during the lawsuit against ACME. The story of Sisyphus has always been the tale of Wile E. Coyote, no matter how hard he tried to roll the boulder to the top of the mountain to crush the Road Runner, it’s destined to roll back down the hill (and in Wile E.’s case, crush him and explode along the way), rinse and repeat for all eternity. He’s doomed to repeat his mistakes, or as the film elegantly puts it, destined to try again.

It’s a different story for his lawyer, Kevin Avery (Will Forte) who brings justice to his cartoon clients by settling every case for a couple hundred dollars. It’s through Wile E. Coyote’s stubbornness that Kevin and his firm are dragged into this lawsuit by sneaking additional evidence and burning the settlement offer in ACME’s face, forcing Kevin to crawl out of his safe guaranteed victory and risk failing in order to do what’s right. The film opens with a sentence “Based on a true story” and that seems to be the case for Warner Bros. in 2021-2023, a studio that initiated Operation Popcorn in fear of their movies not drawing enough moviegoers and tossed multiple finished films as tax write-offs because they were financial risks. Warner Bros. played it safe for a few years, fearful of failure and writing off movies made by thousands of creatives to salvage some money back. Kevin represents everything Warner Bros. stood for in 2023, afraid to take risks in filmmaking which resulted in the studio releasing safe, known IPs like The Flash, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, Meg 2: The Trench, and Wonka in 2023 instead of a courtroom comedy about a coyote who doesn’t speak.

While the film was scrapped for taxes, it seemed the mischievous Coyote got into the heads of the WB executives because there has been a notable shift in their films as of late. Warner Bros. still releases several safe films that inevitably make them a billion dollars (A Minecraft Movie) or fail spectacularly (Supergirl) but recently they’ve also taken more risks than most major Hollywood studios. They’ve given Ryan Coogler $100 million to create Sinners and PTA approximately $150 million to create One Battle After Another, both known directors with incredible casts but also both original films from directors that have never made huge profits from their prior original projects. Looking at just this summer, asides from Nolan’s epic, the 2026 box-office summer was also defined by Obsession making $500 million off a $700k budget and Backrooms becoming the highest grossing A24 film of all time. In 2023 the cinematic landscape was different, audiences drove out to the theatres to familiarize themselves with sequels of their favourite franchises but the last few years, audiences are craving something new. There has been a notable shift in audiences finally asking for something more in their theatrical experience, and hopefully this is a sign for studios to take some risks and trust the audience to be there when the boulder slips.

Score: 3.75/5