The wacky, gruesome ‘Cocaine Bear’ loosely based on an infamous true story

February 21, 2023

WTVQ News Desk,

(CNN NEWSOURCE) — A new movie heading to theaters this week was loosely inspired by true events — yes, you guessed it. Cocaine Bear.

The real “cocaine bear” incident occurred in Blue Ridge, Georgia in 1985, when investigators found the carcass of a black bear that had ingested large amounts of the substance, which was thrown from a smuggler’s plane.

“No, no, no, no don’t eat that! Let’s see what kind of effect that has on him.”

Elizabeth Banks steps behind the camera to direct the gorey comedy, Cocaine Bear.

“A bear did cocaine!”

“I love the challenges that it presented. It felt very risky to me because it’s a confluence of a lot of things that had to, you know, the tone of the movie was so important to pull off. I knew that I could kind of hide a comedy inside of a horror movie.”

“She’s an actor who knows how to talk to actors. And so to have one of us in the director’s chair, it’s a plus.”

“But mama bear and papa bear will be very angry because drugs, especially cocaine, are very, very bad.”

“I have these like wild friends, mom-friends of mine. And they’re like, if you don’t do this movie, we’re gonna stop being friends with you, you’ve got to do this movie and we’re all taking our 16-year-olds to go see it when it comes out in a big pack.”

The movie’s R-rating for bloody violence and gore is well-earned.

“I’ve gone down the internet rabbit hole of looking at real animal attack victims and what that looks like and it is, it’s horrifying, it’s gory, it’s crazy and I just felt like we had to lean in. I mean this concept is bold and audacious and if I made any choices that were not bold, then it wasn’t gonna work. You have to lean into this material. You can’t shy away from it.”

“It kind of seems like a thing that stays with a man forever.”