The official trailer has been released for the wild dark comedy Cocaine Bear. The film, which was originally announced in March of last year, is based on a true story about a bear who ate an abandoned bag of cocaine in Georgia in 1985. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, whose previous works include Pitch Perfect 2 and 2019's Charlie's Angels, the film stars Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Rhys, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Margo Martindale.
Today, Universal Pictures unleashed the official trailer for the already notorious Cocaine Bear, showing a first glimpse at the mayhem it entails. To the strains of "White Lines," the clip runs viewers through the basic plot of the movie. When the bear gets his snout into a brick of cocaine, things at first seem like they might be hilarious as it flops about enjoying itself. However, its glee soon transforms into bloodlust, and it chases a family around the forest in a variety of tense sequences that are nevertheless packed with comic relief. Check it out below:
Everything We Know About Cocaine Bear
With a premise this wild, Banks will be pushing herself into brand new directorial territory with Cocaine Bear, expanding in a darker direction from her previous comedies though still harnessing the action chops she polished in the Charlie's Angels reboot, which starred Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska. The film comes from a script by Jimmy Warden, who made his screenwriting debut with the 2020 Netflix sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen. He has stuck around from the time the film was initially announced in December 2019 before being retooled, at which point Scream 2022 and Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were lined up to direct.
The film was also produced by Banks and The Babysitter's Brian Duffield, along with Aditya Sood, Max Handelman, and producing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose previous collaborations include 2014's The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street, and its sequel 22 Jump Street. The film is expected in theaters on February 24, 2023, and is so far the biggest wide release set for that particular weekend. Considering the fact that it is coming out just one week after the Marvel Cinematic Universe threequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it still seems unlikely that it will hit number 1 in the box office when it opens, but it has a strong chance of scoring audiences who have already seen the superhero epic.
Cocaine Bear True Story Explained
For the most part, it seems that essentially everything in the film Cocaine Bear is fabricated. While the idea of a bear devouring cocaine piques the interest, the true story involves the bear ingesting 70 pounds of cocaine that were offloaded by a drug smuggler who later died because he was carrying too much when attempting to parachute to safety. In real life, the bear died and - as far as has been reported - did not actually go on a bloody rampage.
Source: Universal Pictures
