Ian Frazier Wrote ‘Coyote v. Acme’ in 1990. Now It’s a Movie.

For the next decade, the project lay dormant. Not that Frazier was losing sleep over it. He was busy with New Yorker ***ignments and a nonfiction book, “Travels in Siberia.” Further, he had no secret desire to become a Hollywood player, though he did act in “Blue in the Face,” an indie movie co-directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster. When Frazier saw it at an art house in Missoula, Mont., he was the only person in the theater.

“I don’t go to movies,” he said. “For a long time, I watched one movie a year — ‘Spaceballs.’”

The Big Check

James Gunn, the director of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, was another fan of Frazier’s story. In 2015, he pitched the idea to Warner Bros. itself and got a yes.

“When Warner Bros. came along, I thought, ‘It’s got a better shot,’” Frazier said.

Six more years went by. Multiple drafts. A new production team. A merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery. Finally, in 2022, filming began.

Even then, Frazier’s 1990 story was guiding the approach of the producer Chris DeFaria, the director Dave Green and the screenwriter Samy Burch. “Ian’s piece was always this thing to aspire to, tonally,” Burch said. Green called Frazier’s story “funny and deep all at once,” adding, “It’s the thing that lit my flame and made me laugh out loud, hard.”

After the $70 million movie was shot, a release date was set for July 2023. And then it went over a cliff: Warner Bros. Discovery decided to shelve it, not because “Coyote vs. Acme” was bad (test audiences loved it), but because burying it allowed the company to take a $30 million tax write-down.