If you've followed the Coyote vs. Acme saga at all, you know it's been a saga. Warner Bros. shelved a finished movie, and per TheWrap's reporting the studio then spent months fielding acquisition offers from other studios, anxious to get the movie off the books one way or another. And somehow the darn thing is actually getting a theatrical release now. It's a fun little genre of survival story I never get tired of, and MSN rounded up five shelved movies that eventually saw the light of day.

The shelved-movie comeback is its own kind of underdog tale. Studios bury films for all kinds of reasons, fans speculate endlessly, and rarely does any of that speculation have much to do with whether the movie is any good. Then years later, sometimes decades later, somebody digs them up and audiences finally get to judge for themselves.

I'd rather not spoil all five of MSN's picks here, because half the fun of a list like this is the surprise of what studios tried to pretend never existed. Go click through it. Some of these you'll know, and I'd bet at least one catches you off guard.

And I'll admit there's a grim poetry to the whole Warner Bros. wave, animation and live-action alike, where finished projects got written off or left to sit. Wile E. Coyote surviving the drop after the anvil, over and over, and still ordering from Acme. The metaphor writes itself.

What I love about these comeback stories is what they say about movies in general. A finished film isn't a spreadsheet entry, it's years of people's work, and eventually somebody with power remembers that and does something about it. Forte pushed for this one publicly for a long time, and that persistence paid off.

If Coyote vs. Acme does well in its theatrical run, and early signs suggest curiosity is there, maybe it makes the next shelving decision a little harder to justify. Or maybe studios never learn. History says both, somehow, at the same time.

Check the full list over at MSN for all five picks. Me, I'm just glad the coyote finally caught something.