‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Snags No. 2 With $15.4M as ‘Spider-Man’ Nears ‘Avatar 2’; ‘Dog Stars’ Put to Sleep
Coyote vs. Acme, the animated-live-action hybrid that Warner Bros. once shelved as a tax write-off before independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment rescued it, opened to $15.4 million and second place at the North American box office. The result matters because it validates Ketchup's $50 million gamble to save the film following a fan-led social media backlash, marking the biggest opening ever for the independent distributor even though the takings were softer than typical hybrid releases.
Released on 3,575 screens and earning an A CinemaScore, the film stars Will Forte, Lana Condor and John Cena and has scored 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. It finished behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which topped the chart for a fifth straight weekend with $22.2 million, pushing its domestic total to $891.5 million and its worldwide haul to $2.332 billion, edging it close to Avatar: The Way of Water among all-time global earners. Elsewhere, Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars flopped with just $8 million in fifth place, while Universal's The Odyssey held third place with $14.3 million.
- Coyote vs. Acme opens strong with $15.4M, Ketchup's biggest debut ever
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day stays No. 1, nears Avatar 2's global total
- Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars flops with only $8M opening
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Coyote vs. Acme is a live-action/animation film built around Looney Tunes characters Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Warner Bros. made the film but decided in 2023 to shelve it entirely rather than release it, treating it as a tax write-off, which prompted public criticism from fans and industry figures. It was later picked up and rescued for release by Ketchup Entertainment, a smaller independent distributor.
Its box office performance is being watched partly because it tests whether a film written off by a major studio can still find an audience, and partly because it is a significant financial gamble for Ketchup, a much smaller company than the major studios it is competing against. The film's opening weekend result is also being compared with other films in cinemas at the same time, including the long-running Spider-Man sequel, which has been dominating takings for weeks, and other new and existing releases.
More broadly, weekly box office rankings like this are used across the film industry as a rough gauge of what audiences are choosing to watch, and are closely followed by studios, distributors and cinema chains for signs of broader trends in cinema-going.