Joseph Battista, Editor
Getting canceled on has to be in the top three worst feelings in the world. Honestly, I am pretty sure animals feel it too: I've seen the pain in my dog's eyes when the daily walk is skipped. Like forgetting about leftovers after they're too far gone, the feeling is an indescribable anguish of what could have been but never was. Sadly, for fans of the Looney Tunes, this is reality. Warner Bros. canceled the Looney Tunes film "Coyote vs. Acme," a fully finished $70 million production, in November 2023.
Sit in the shoes of a Looney Tooner. It has been a year since the announcement trailer for your favorite franchise's next release. Eagerly, you have waited in anticipation for the release. But then, the movie gets canceled. Worst of all, the movie is fully finished but not worth the effort of releasing, so it will be shelved away for you to never see just to save the producer's pockets. Unless there were changes that allowed companies to save some coin on canceled projects while still allowing the public access.
Discarding finished movies for profit's sake sucks, not only for franchise fans but for everyone. It restricts the breadth of expression art provides. No longer can these films entertain or inspire. Yet, that was their whole purpose, the reason teams sunk hours of effort and passion into the project to begin with. Warner Bros. is the only winner in this situation, while everyone else suffers a loss.
This film is not the first, but the third sacrificial lamb to the god known as tax write-offs for Warner Bros., the previous two being, "Batgirl" and "Scoob Holiday Haunt". Warner Bros. has not cited a reason for the cancellation. But, Deadline reports the film's cancellation is being used as a $30 million tax write-down, shown in Warner Bros. Q3 reports. Likely, these films were projected to be monetary losses, after marketing costs are factored in, so despite their completion, they are cut so that company profits can be preserved.
A simple proposal that likely is way more nuanced (which is for the professionals to work out, not me) is for the IRS to allow these canceled films to be released by a medium that cannot generate profit for the organization. Perhaps the film can be donated to a non-profit to host, a government database, or something of the like. It would be like Daffy Duck coming back from the dead, reanimated for his fan's excitement. Publishers of the film could maintain the goodwill of fans while also getting their cost savings.
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