With Will Forte as the lead role and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Samy Burch, Coyote vs. Acme appeared poised for success. However, it was not to be. Instead, Warner Bros chose to scrap the movie in 2023 in exchange for a $35-$40 million million tax break. Multiple streaming companies reportedly submitted offers for the film, but all were rejected. Drew Taylor, a reporter with TheWrap, stated, “The studio insisted on a price tag that would cover ‘negative cost plus’ — what the movie cost the studio and additional fees that Warner Bros. had incurred.” Taylor added that CEO David Zaslav never even saw the movie before deciding to shelve it. Coyote vs. Acme was getting great test scores from test audiences, and upon hearing of the project’s trashing, a wave of social media backlash erupted under the #SaveCoyoteVsAcme banner. Despite creating a film that likely would have found an adoring audience both now and for years to come, Warner Bros chose a tax break instead.
This was not the only film Warner Bros strangled recently; they also canceled the Leslie Grace-led Batgirl in 2022 even though it was almost finished. At a press event, DC Studios co-chair Peter Safran stated simply that the film was “not releasable." The removal of any possibility of seeing these movies is troubling. The willingness of a movie studio to completely destroy multiple nearly finished projects rather than release the art that countless individuals spent years creating highlights the utter stranglehold capitalism has over the entertainment industry. Studios are more interested in enriching themselves than in enriching people’s lives with art, and the fact that the scales are balanced that way paints a bleak picture for the future of the film industry.
Movies are unfortunately not the only place this content destruction occurs. The proliferation of streaming sites has, if anything, made the problem much worse. Shows like Willow and Infinity Train are just a few of many that have been pulled. Infinity Train’s soundtrack has even been removed from streaming, and clips from the show have been deleted from Max’s official Youtube channel, making it impossible for fans to engage with the material at all, let alone form a large following like they could with properly preserved media. Movies from Hocus Pocus to Citizen Kane have been box office bombs, falling well short of studio expectations. However, they were still available for audiences to find afterwards, and over the years they built extremely passionate fanbases. If they had been locked away for the studios’ benefit, we would be deprived of films that many people consider their favorites of all time.
Another issue with streaming platforms is their tendency to prematurely cancel promising shows. Jeff Goldblum-led KAOS is one of the latest shows to fall victim to Netflix’s policy of basing renewal decisions primarily off the show’s performance in its first 28 days, leading to its cancellation after a mere six weeks. In this writer’s opinion, this model is insane. Producers used to give shows to find an audience and build up a passionate viewerbase, but now if shows don’t immediately generate massive audiences they are unceremoniously dumped by the wayside. Under capitalism, art is given no time to grow and improve; if it doesn’t quickly produce profit, it is seen to have no value.
The stated reasons for these removals always seem to come down to cost, which points to a larger problem with our modern media ecosystem. Some of the media moguls throwing these pieces of art out earned nearly $50 million in 2023 alone. These tycoons rake in obscene profits off the labor of the artists that work under them, but when it comes time to spend money to support that art, they seem increasingly reluctant to do so. The SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 were a recent expression of the frustration many creatives in the entertainment industry are feeling. Workers went on strike for higher wages, mainly in the form of residuals from shows on streaming sites, as well as protections against AI being used to (poorly) replace the work they do. They eventually won a new contract guaranteeing protections in several areas and a “streaming participation bonus”, as well as several other bonuses. This is obviously a big win, but the fact that nationwide strikes were needed for months just to make any progress towards a more equitable system highlights how much power the millionaire executives have, and how they always come back to pressing down on the people that made them those fortunes in the first place.
A system that destroys finished art products before the public is ever able to see them, suppresses the people who make that art for the enrichment of those that own their labor, and prioritizes tax write-downs over releasing the artistic vision of hundreds of creators is antithetical to art. Capitalism is that system. Under capitalism, the only thing that matters is profit, and art will always be forced to take a back seat. The crazy thing is that the corporations most responsible for shutting down art in these examples have been entertainment companies, the one group you would think would get this right because art is their product. Even they, however, cannot be trusted to act in art’s best interest under capitalism.Wile E. Coyote may trust ACME no matter how many times they wrong him, but it’s time creatives and audiences leave this broken system behind for good.
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