A week ago I went to see Coyote vs. Acme, the movie Warner Bros. once decided would be more valuable if nobody ever saw it.
We talked about the whole ridiculous history.
Warner Bros. finished the movie, spent roughly $70 million making it, and then decided not releasing it was somehow the sensible financial decision.
At one point, the plan was reportedly to take about a $30 million tax write-off and send Wile E. Coyote to the great hard drive in the sky.
Then Ketchup Entertainment came along and bought the distribution rights for $50 million.
Which finally allowed the public to answer the important question:
Was the movie Warner Bros. didn’t want us to see actually any good?
We thought it was.
And apparently we weren’t alone.
Coyote vs. Acme opened to about $15.9 million domestically, finished second at the box office, and gave Ketchup Entertainment the biggest opening in the distributor’s history. This beat the original estimates by a substantial amount.
It has now made more than $22 million worldwide.
Now, before anybody starts ordering yachts, that’s box office gross.
Ketchup doesn’t get to walk into the theater Monday morning and empty $22 million out of the popcorn register. Theaters get their share. There are marketing costs. There was that $50 million acquisition.
And somewhere, an accountant is probably staring at a spreadsheet with seventeen columns labeled ACME.
So we are nowhere near declaring this whole thing a financial triumph.
But we can say this:
$22 million is considerably more than zero.
Which is approximately what the movie would have made sitting on a Warner Bros. hard drive.
And then something happened.
Exactly one week after I went to see Coyote vs. Acme, I was wandering through the Once Upon a Time in America Museum on my way home from Page.
I turned a corner.
And found this.
Wile E. Coyote.
Inside an ACME cannon. Possibly taxidermy.
A Road Runner stands nearby, which feels less like part of the exhibit and more like a witness waiting for the inevitable. Please note the Road Runner is not taxidermy. He’s probably too fast. Apparently, the museum needs to try the birdseed-and-metal-pellet trick.
And according to the museum, this is a temporary exhibit.
Temporary.
I don’t know what temporary means in this particular situation.
Is the cannon going somewhere?
Is the Road Runner going somewhere?
Is the coyote going somewhere?
Because historically, when Wile E. Coyote gets into an ACME cannon, something is definitely going somewhere.
Usually Wile E. Coyote.
But I do appreciate the timing.
For years, Warner Bros. tried to make Coyote vs. Acme disappear.
The movie survived. It survived cancellation. It survived the tax-write-off plan.
It survived becoming one of those movies everybody talked about despite the minor inconvenience that nobody was allowed to watch it.
Then somebody paid $50 million to rescue it.
People finally got to see it.
It opened No. 2 at the box office.
And exactly one week after I watched it, I randomly found Wile E. Coyote sitting inside an ACME cannon in southern Utah.
Apparently this damn coyote cannot be permanently removed from anything.
Gravity hasn’t done it. Explosives haven’t done it. Warner Bros. accounting couldn’t do it.
And now he’s apparently fighting museum rotation schedules with hot rods.
Mbeep mbeep.
Yesterday’s Sports Mess
Yesterday went 1-2, with the Yankees rescuing us in extra innings while Milwaukee F5 and San Diego went down. Milwaukee actually won the game after our supposedly clever F5 market managed to isolate the exact portion of the game they lost, which is a useful reminder that F5 isn’t automatically better just because we love the starter matchup. The Padres simply lost a handicap we got wrong, while Cam Schlittler gave the Yankees eight innings of exactly the starting-pitcher edge we expected. One win, two losses. Nobody touch anything sharp.
THE GIANT SCOREBOARD
ALL SPORTS: 1,041-1,073-7
Recent journey:
1-8 → 4-0 → 0-3 → 1-2 → 1-2 → 1-2 → 2-1 → 3-1 → 1-3 → 2-1 → 1-2
Meanwhile:
TENNIS: 0-1
Untouched.
Protected.
Currently being considered for a temporary exhibit in southern Utah.
Today’s Picks
We’re only taking two today: Brewers ML -115 and Astros ML -155, using consensus lines. Milwaukee is the favorite because Logan Henderson gives us the cleanest combination of starter edge, team quality and a price that doesn’t require selling plasma, and this time we’re taking the whole baseball game instead of getting cute with the first five. Houston gets Hunter Brown against Luis Castillo and the stronger overall team, although the price makes it clearly our second choice. We looked at the Dodgers behind Tarik Skubal, saw a price approaching three-to-one on a team that has lost six of eight, and politely backed away from the counter. Two picks are enough.
This isn’t called Pick What I Pick.
It’s called Don’t Pick What I Pick.
Please wager accordingly.
