‘Coyote Vs. Acme’ Composer Steven Price Slams Warners For “Bizarre Anti-Art Studio Financial Shenanigans” Over Pic’s Axing; Director Dave Green Is “Beyond Devastated”

Coyote vs. Acme composer Steven Price has blasted the David Zaslav cost-cutting Warner Bros Discovery administration for axing the Looney Tunes hybrid live-action animated film.

Price, who won an original score Oscar for Warner Bros. tentpole Gravity in 2014 took to X to say “Had a lot of fun scoring Coyote Vs Acme. As no-one will be able to hear it now, due to bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans I will never understand, here is a bit of behind the scenes footage of our “Meep Meep” Roadrunner choir, with apologies to Tchaikovsky…”

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Here is the composer’s tweet:

As we reported yesterday, Warner Bros. shelved the finished movie for both a theatrical or Max release, taking an estimated $30M writedown instead on the $70M production. This despite the fact that the 2024 theatrical release calendar needs movies due to the actors strike delaying several titles. It’s the third time the Zaslav-run administration has axed a movie, the other two being Max’s Batgirl and Scoob Holiday Haunt! which weren’t fully polished at the time of their cancellation.

The unplugging of Batgirl brought public ire against the studio by the movie’s filmmakers, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah as well as its stars. However, this time around, Warners made sure that they had secured a deal with Coyote vs. Acme filmmaker David Green who is working on a New Line project.

Green had the following to say on X, “For three years, I was lucky enough to make a movie about Wile E. Coyote, the most persistent, passionate, and resilient character of all time. I was surrounded by a brilliant team, who poured their souls into this project for year.”

He acknowledged, “we were embraced by test audiences who rewarded us with fantastic scores…and beyond devastated by WB’s decision.”

Price’s colleague and UK composer Daniel Pemberton who has written several Warner Bros. scores such as Ocean’s Eight, Bird’s of Prey and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. blasted, “This behaviour is not only terrible but any half decent creative is gonna think twice signing up huge chunks of their life to throw everything they have at a project from studios that seem pretty cavalier about ever letting that work get seen… WB playing a terrible long game.”

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