Back in 2023, John Cenafans were eagerly awaiting the summer arrival of his latest animated effort, Coyote vs. Acme, a hybrid feature with live-action featuring Cena as Buddy Crane. However, the baffling decision was then made to remove the film entirely from the release schedule, with its July release date replaced by Barbie. Finally, after being acquired by Ketchup Entertainment in 2025, the film was rescheduled for release in 2026, over three years after it was supposed to debut. Barring any glaring issues, Coyote vs. Acme will come to a theater near you on August 28, 2026.
Exciting as this Cena role is, it is far from his first work in the animation realm, the most underrated of which has just quietly returned to the streaming charts. Ferdinand, a 2017 animated movie from 20th Century Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, and Davis Entertainment, saw Cena star alongside the likes of Kate McKinnon, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, Doctor Who favorite David Tennant, and more. Loosely based on the 1936 children’s book The Story of Ferdinand, the film follows a young bull who escapes a Spanish training camp and finds refuge on a farm, only for his solace to be broken when he is returned to his former captors. To escape, the bull joins forces with an unlikely team of other animals.
One of Cena’s more impressive voice performances, having been criticized for playing heightened versions of himself in other projects, Ferdinand rightfully earned praise from critics when it debuted nine years ago. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film boasts a positive 70% score, with the consensus on the site reading, “Ferdinand‘s colorful update on a classic tale doesn’t go anywhere unexpected, but its timeless themes — and John Cena’s engaging voice work in the title role — make for family-friendly fun.” Almost a decade on, Ferdinand is a streaming hit again, landing a place in the top ten most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S., at the time of writing.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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‘Ferdinand’ Was a Box Office Hit
Although the film has fallen into obscurity since, there was once a time when Ferdinand was a popular mainstream option for families in theaters. Against a production budget of $111 million, the film returned an impressive global haul of $307 million. Split between $84 million in domestic revenue and a further $223 million from overseas markets, this December 2017 release was the early Christmas present millions enjoyed, and many are now rediscovering.
Ferdinand is streaming on HBO Max. Make sure to stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
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