‘Cocaine Bear’ team enlisted VFX royalty to ensure the bear was believable

If you think that the premise of the upcoming horror flick Cocaine Bear is way too goofy for its own good — well, you’re right. But isn’t that part of the fun? However, if you do decide to spend your hard-earned cash on a theater ticket to watch a drugged-up black bear go to town, at the very least you can expect some excellent CGI.

It turns out that no expense was spared when it came to bringing life to the titular and already infamous Cocaine Bear. The film’s production team enlisted the help of Peter Jackson’s visual effects company, Weta FX, which has pitched in on a number of pretty much insignificant indie titles like King Kong, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar. 

Cocaine Bear producer Chris Miller went into detail with The Hollywood Reporter as to why they went with what can only be described as VFX royalty when bringing life to ‘Cokie’, the titular apex predator who had way too big a bump: 

“It was very important to us and very important to Elizabeth to make sure that you really believe the bear, because if you didn’t then the whole movie is pointless. They studied actual crazy things that bears do, bear movements and stuff, and then we goosed it a little bit.” 

So there you have it – Cocaine Bear may be inherently silly, but at least the bear will be believable. The film rampages into theaters on Feb. 24. To tide you over until then, there’s a neat tie-in game for the movie that you can check out.