Classic Looney Tunes characters come to life as live action and animation merge in in Director Dave Green’s comedy, Coyote vs. Acme.

Based on the 1990 The New Yorker magazine article by Ian Frazier, Green’s film brings Wile E. Coyote into the courthouse as he enlists a down and out attorney to sue the Acme Corporation for repeatedly selling him alleged faulty products that fail too many times in his dogged

On August 23, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Green discussed the making of Coyote vs. Acme during a Q&A moderated by Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Project Hail Mary).

During the conversation, Green spoke about the challenges of making a film that combined animated characters with live action.

“When we when we started the process, Producer Chris DeFaria said, ‘the one person who’s not going to show up on set is Wile E. Coyote because he doesn’t exist.’ What it meant was this year-long story process where we did a story reel and made this very weird looking kind of proof of concept that was hand drawn illustrations printed on top of previs so the previs represented everything that actors would be doing and then the cartoon layer was meant to just tell people what the cartoons would be doing. We took that guide to set and showed it to our puppeteer, Dave Barclay, who built this life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet that had like expressions so it’d frown or be happy. Then he would kind of walk around. So, it would be like sometimes like, ‘And then he’s gonna go here and then he’s gonna be a blur and he’s gonna be out the door.’ But it helped everyone imagine Wile E. as like a living breathing co-star.”

Green’s other feature directorial credits include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Earth to Echo. He has been a DGA member since 2012.