Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner Cartoon

Later Cartoons

The original Chuck Jones productions ended in 1963 with the closing of the Warner Bros. animation studio. Shortly thereafter, Pink Panther co-creator David DePatie and Road Runner co-director Friz Freleng formed DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and were commissioned to continue production of Road Runner.

The first cartoon of the DePatie-Freleng Road Runner series, The Wild Chase, was directed by Friz Freleng in 1965, and notably starred Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester the Cat alongside Wile E. and Road Runner. In total, DePatie-Freleng produced 14 Road Runner cartoons, two of which were directed by Robert McKimson (Rushing Roulette, 1965, and Sugar and Spies, 1966).

The remaining eleven were subcontracted to Format Films and directed under ex-Warner Bros. animator Rudy Larriva. The "Larriva Eleven," as the series was later called, lacked the fast-paced action of the Chuck Jones originals and was poorly received by critics. In Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin calls the series "witless in every sense of the word."

Post-Chuck Jones cartoons allow the coyote to speak, and once (in Soup or Sonic, 1980) he has the Road Runner in his grasp but thanks to a gag involving a tunnel that gets smaller and narrower as he goes through it, the coyote is only a few inches tall and can only grab the Road Runner's leg - at which point he holds up a sign that reads "Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him. Now what do I do?"

Wile E. Coyote has also unsuccessfully attempted to catch and eat Bugs Bunny in another series of cartoons. In these cartoons, the coyote takes on the guise of a self-described "super genius" and speaks with a smooth, generic upper-class accent provided by Mel Blanc.

In one short, Bugs Bunny - with the help of amphetamines - even sits in for Road Runner, who has "sprained a giblet," and carries out the duties of outsmarting the hungry scavenger.

In the 1961 pilot for a potential television anthology series (but later released as a theatrical short entitled The Adventures of the Road-Runner - later edited and split into two short subjects called Zip Zip Hooray! and Road Runner A-Go-Go), Wile E. lectures two young TV-watching children about the edible parts of a Road Runner, attempting to explain his somewhat irrational obsession with catching it. He does so with help from an illustrated chart showing each section of the bird and its flavor. Having never caught the bird, how he would know what it tastes like is open to conjecture.

Wile E. and the Road Runner later appeared in several episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. In this series, Wile E. (voiced in the Jim Reardon episode "Piece of Mind" by Joe Alaskey) was the dean of Acme Looniversity and the mentor of Calamity Coyote. The Road Runner's protege in this series was Little Beeper. In the episode "Piece of Mind," Wile E. narrates the life story of Calamity while Calamity is falling from the top of a tall skyscraper. In the direct-to-video Tiny Toon movie, How I Spent My Summer Vaction, the Road Runner finally gets a taste of humilation by getting run over by a mail truck that "brakes for coyotes."

In the 2000s, Wile E. and the Road Runner have been featured in episodes of the series Baby Looney Tunes.