UPDATE 8/4: The next chart is in, and the answer is two zeros. Coyote vs. Acme is frozen at 27 percent awareness and 41 percent interest, no movement in two weeks. Original article follows.
The audience Warner Bros. Discovery said didn’t exist is still sitting right there in the survey data.
The Quorum’s new eight-week tracking chart, published by Puck, has Coyote vs. Acme at 27 percent awareness and 41 percent interest ahead of its August 28 release.
That’s a 14-point demand gap, still one of the widest of any film on the board. When people hear this movie exists, they want to see it. That hasn’t changed since we first covered the tracking.
What did change is the momentum. Awareness inched up a single point this cycle while interest eased two, which means the backlash-fueled free press has carried this movie as far as it can.
Now the job belongs to Ketchup Entertainment. Five and a half weeks out, roughly three in four moviegoers still don’t know the film they saved is actually coming to theaters.
The Quorum polls everyday moviegoers on upcoming releases, measuring awareness (have you heard of it?) and interest (do you want to see it?). It measures actual public demand, not studio math.
For the full board, including Spider-Man’s runaway numbers, see our summer tracking roundup.
The Sell Is Easy, Someone Has To Make It
The history is the marketing campaign. WBD shelved the completed film in November 2023 for a tax write-off, the third movie buried under David Zaslav after Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt.
The fan backlash worked, Ketchup picked the film up for a reported $50 million, and the trailer leaned all the way in with “The Film Acme Didn’t Want You to See.”
It’s the pattern we’ve documented for years: Hollywood blames the fans, and this time the fans saved the movie outright. The 41 percent interest number is those fans, still on the record.
What A Marketing Machine Looks Like
The same chart shows exactly what Ketchup is up against. The End of Oak Street just jumped seven points of awareness in two weeks the moment Warner Bros.’ marketing switched on.
Ketchup doesn’t have Warner Bros. money. What it has is a fanbase that already proved it will fight for this movie, a premise that sells itself in one sentence, and five weeks to convert the loudest underdog story in Hollywood into ticket sales.
The demand curve says the audience did its part. The next chart tells us whether Ketchup did its own.
If it opens well, it won’t just be a win for a small distributor. It will be a receipt, printed by the audience, itemizing exactly what Warner Bros. Discovery threw away.
Coyote vs. Acme opens in theaters August 28, directed by Dave Green and starring Will Forte and John Cena, with James Gunn among the producers.
