Wile E. Coyote's Real Adversary Was Never the Road Runner
In August, Coyote vs. ACME arrives in theaters. The premise is both simple and absurd. Wile E. Coyote sues the ACME Corporation for decades of defective products. Rocket skates that exploded. Jet-powered unicycles that launched him into canyon walls. Anvils, TNT, dehydrated boulders, invisible paint, earthquake pills, and triple-strength fortified leg muscle vitamins, all sold to a customer who kept buying anyway. Watch the trailer here. It is funnier than your typical business newsletter. It is also a case study in how a company can build something worth watching and still nearly bury it.
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved this film alongside Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt. Rather than release any of the three, the studio took a tax write-off instead. Write-offs are a legitimate accounting tool, but using one on a finished film sends a message about priorities. It took sustained media pressure before the company finally sold the distribution rights. A finished product, built by real people who did real work, sat on a shelf because the accounting seemed to make more sense than the audience did. That single decision captures a larger pattern.
That pattern has followed Warner Bros. through several changes in leadership. The DC universe is home to some of the most recognizable characters in fiction, yet it has never matched Marvel at the box office. Statista's tracking shows Marvel's Avengers: Endgame earned more than $850 million domestically, roughly double what Wonder Woman, the highest-grossing DC film to date, brought in. That gap persists despite Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman being arguably stronger characters, on their own terms, than most of what Marvel built a franchise around. High debt loads and other busines headwinds compounded the problem. The pending Paramount Skydance transaction will bring its own adjustments. The most recent misstep, Supergirl, opened to roughly $37 million domestically this summer, well below projections near $55 million. It then dropped more than 70 percent in its second weekend, one of the steepest declines in superhero movie history, worse than most of the genre's well-known bombs.
The last major leadership change came in 2022, when David Zaslav took the helm after Discovery merged with WarnerMedia. His background was built in television, and that experience has not translated cleanly to running a studio, a streaming platform, and a legacy film library at once. He did not make every misstep himself, but he is accountable for the team he assembled and the calls that team has made. Warner Bros. Discovery announced this June that it would split into two companies, one built around the studio and streaming, the other around its declining cable networks. The trade press treated the split as something close to an admission that the original thesis, combining prestige and populism under one roof, never worked. Years earlier, the board had a choice between a familiar television executive and someone who might have pushed the company toward a genuinely different trajectory. It chose familiar.
The pattern across these decisions suggests a departure from the Optimal Business Model. A five-year strategic plan is a map, and WBD leadership seems to have mistaken the map for reality. Leadership treated quarterly numbers as proof of success, rather than as a lagging indicator that confirms success. Financial and stock price performance drove decisions, often ahead of the other stakeholders those decisions actually touched: filmmakers, employees, and the audiences who show up on opening weekend. That focus rewards short-term moves and starves long-term growth. In entertainment, as in most businesses, long-term success comes from making things people genuinely want to see. The numbers follow that, not the other way around.
Perhaps the sharpest line in the entire Coyote vs. ACME trailer belongs to Foghorn Leghorn, who announces near the end that "The ACME Corporation is releasing this film for accounting purposes only." It plays as a joke about one shelved movie, but it lands as commentary on an entire operating philosophy.
One shelved film, one joke.
Lands on the shelf where it sat,
Numbers over craft.
Related Articles
Coyote vs. ACME | Official Trailer, YouTube
U.S. and Canada Box Office Revenue of DC Films | Statista
U.S. and Canada Box Office Revenue of Marvel Films | Statista
How Superhero Movies Lost Their Power | Stat Significant
Supergirl Box Office Collapses 80%, Loses to a George Washington Movie | Cosmic Book News
Supergirl Box Office Bomb Signals Trouble for DC Studios | Variety
Supergirl Is Becoming a Costly Box Office Bomb | The Hollywood Reporter
Assessing Warner Bros. Discovery Valuation | Yahoo Finance
David Zaslav Has Admitted Defeat | Puck
The Worst Acquisition in History, Again | Medium
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Quotes
"Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent."
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"You must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool."
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Leadership is the most important work we do—in business and in life. I've spent over 40 years working with leaders across more than 100 companies, and I'm still learning. These newsletters share my thoughts on leadership today and what we can learn.
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