Adventures of the Road-Runner

Adventures of the Road-Runner is an animated film, directed by Chuck Jones and co-directed by Maurice Noble and Tom Ray. It was the intended pilot for a TV series starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, but was never picked up. As a result, it was split into three further shorts. The first one was To Beep or Not to Beep (1963). The other two were assembled by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises in 1965 after they took over the Looney Tunes series. The split-up shorts were titled Roadrunner a Go-Go and Zip Zip Hooray!.

The short revolves around Wile E. Coyote reviewing his past attempts at catching the Road Runner (in the form of stock footage from previous Coyote/Road Runner shorts), and making new, revised plans to catch him - which go just as wrong, if not more so than the first attempts. In a mostly unrelated story, as two children (one of them is Ralph Phillips) watch the Coyote on television, Ralph is talking about how much trouble he has concentrating on things and gets caught up in his daydreams (re-using footage from Jones' earlier short, From A to Z-Z-Z-Z in the process). The two stories briefly link up when the Coyote directly addresses the kids on why he wants to eat the Road Runner. This sequence features a television commercial for "The Acme Batman Suit! The only Batman uniform worn by bats!", which is newly narrated stock footage from Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z.

The short also contains what would most likely have been the series' opening sequence, closing sequence and theme song (titled Out on the Desert) of the hoped for series. When Jones later produced the Tom and Jerry series, the format of the Coyote reviewing his past adventures would be copied in the short Shutter Bugged Cat, which Tom Ray also directed.

Clips from this film were later included in the Toon Heads special The Lost Warner Bros. Cartoons. The whole film was included as a bonus feature in Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2.