The agency held a silent auction on Aug. 20, according to Patch and local television reports. Warren’s representative submitted the winning bid. Some coverage described the episode as a conventional bidding war, but the city’s account was considerably more orderly: sealed offers, eligibility checks and paperwork. Even viral pigs meet municipal procedure eventually.
Applicants also had to show that they had enough space for a pig and complied with local zoning rules. Those requirements matter because the winning bidder is not taking home a permanently small internet celebrity. A pig is still a pig, despite what an especially flattering camera angle may suggest.
How large could Wilbur become?
KTLA reported that Wilbur currently weighs about 17 pounds. He could eventually reach between 50 and 125 pounds and live for roughly 15 years.
That growth is part of the wider problem surrounding abandoned pet pigs. Buyers may expect a compact household animal, only to discover that the adult version needs far more room, food and long-term care. Los Angeles’ screening and zoning checks are designed to reduce the odds of another abandonment once the novelty wears off.
Wilbur will have considerably more space at Warren’s seven-acre Mousebutt Rescue Ranch in Malibu. Warren previously told Los Angeles magazine that the property housed about 35 animals, including goats, pigs, donkeys, horses and chickens.
Zwilling told KTLA that the ranch has experience caring for pigs and promised its new resident “gourmet salads every day,” along with open acreage and animal companions. This is, by most standards, a substantial improvement on sprinting through West Hollywood traffic.
What will Diane Warren name the new arrival?
The songwriter welcomed him publicly as Wilbur, telling Variety, “Animals are precious sentient creatures. Welcome Wilbur!!!” There is one administrative complication: the ranch already has a pig with that name.
“We have a Wilbur at the ranch already, so is this Wilbur, the Sequel?” Warren told ABC7. She suggested Hollywood as an alternative, although no final name had been confirmed by Aug. 21.
Warren also joked that the rescue was her “second wild animal” save from the streets of Los Angeles. Her broader animal activism includes helping relocate Free, a cow that survived a 2021 slaughterhouse escape in Pico Rivera, to Farm Sanctuary.
The adoption also gave Warren an opportunity to address her unusually durable Academy Awards record. She received an honorary Oscar in 2022 but lost her 17th competitive Best Original Song nomination in March 2026.
“I lose Oscars but I won a pig,” she told ABC7. “It’s fun. It’s fun.”
TMZ reported that Wilbur was safe and headed to the Malibu sanctuary. No substantive post-adoption update had emerged by Aug. 21, leaving the public to assume he was settling into a schedule involving acreage, other animals and salads of a quality rarely offered by city shelters.
