The bonkers first trailer is here for what is sure to be next year’s zaniest action-comedy, Cocaine Bear. The Elizabeth Banks-directed film is inspired by a true event that occurred in 1985 when a black bear got his snout into some cocaine that was abandoned in the woods from a drug runner’s crashed airplane.
Cocaine Bear is produced by the directors of 21 Jump Street and its sequel, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. In a press release, the film’s synopsis is even wilder than the title,
“This wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood.”
Based upon a screenplay by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery-Jennings, Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tylor Ferguson, and many others. Also featured in the cast is the late, great Goodfellas star Ray Liotta in a posthumous role.
Cocaine Bear looks to be taking some understandably liberal interpretations of its source material, making it more of a historical fiction take on the real-life events. You see, while a black bear really did consume what was reported to be 75 pounds of cocaine from a crashed airplane, the mammal died within 20 minutes of doing so, as We Got This Covered previously reported. However, in the film, the bear goes on a coke-fueled rampage on people, which honestly sounds like a lot of fun for an R-rated comedy, so we can’t blame the filmmakers for going the more zany route with the premise.
Cocaine Bear comes to theaters on February 24.