Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Cocaine Bear.
The newest hit to saunter its way into theaters is Cocaine Bear, which was directed by Elizabeth Banks. Inspired by true events, the movie follows a black bear after she ingests a large amount of cocaine and goes on a murderous rampage looking for more. The film stars Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Isiah Whitlock Jr., Ray Liotta, and character actress Margo Martindale.
After a pilot named Andrew C. Thornton II (Matthew Rhys) drops millions of dollars worth of cocaine in the woods, Syd (Liotta) tasks his best guy, Daveed (Jackson Jr.), and his son, Eddie (Ehrenreich), with going to retrieve the drugs. In the meantime, a black bear managed to rip a few of their duffel bags open, leading to some drug-fueled chaos. In the middle of all this, Sari’s (Russell) child Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) took her friend Henry (Christian Convery) to the forest to skip school. The film ends on a mostly happy note, with most of the good people making it out of the forest alive.
With Cocaine Bear earning a reported $23 million in its opening weekend, that could have the producers thinking franchise, but how likely is that?
Could there be a Cocaine Bear 2?
As of writing, there is no official confirmation that a Cocaine Bear sequel is in the works. However, the film does leave a few different paths open should they choose to revisit it. First of all, the Cocaine Bear does manage to survive the events of the film. Not only that, but she has a few Cocaine Cubs of her own. On top of that, it was not confirmed if every bag of coke in the woods was found, so there could be more hidden, waiting for the bears to find.
A plot following a sloth of bears could be exactly where a sequel might go, and it could just be called Cocaine Bears. They would find the remnants of the cocaine and terrorize a new group of hikers. The story also could carry on by following one of the human characters, Stache (Aaron Holliday), a member of the Duchamps gang, who were terrorizing the forest prior to the bear’s rampage.
In the post-credits scene, we see Stache hitchhiking to New York with a duffel bag full of cocaine. Let’s say he makes it to New York, are there some animals who might go crazy after ingesting a bag’s worth of cocaine? That’s right, Cocaine Rats could easily be a spinoff. A bunch of rats could make their way into the cocaine and run rampant, nibbling at everything in sight.
There was also a sheep in the back of the truck Stache got into, so maybe it could have gotten into the cocaine. The other post-credits scene sees Rosette, Bob’s (Whitlock Jr.) dog eat Daveed’s fingers, so maybe the sequel will follow a dog that has the taste of human flesh. The chances are that a movie like that would end up even funnier than Cocaine Bear. What about crossing it over with other franchises? We could see Godzilla vs. Kong vs. Cocaine Bear, Batman v Superman v Cocaine Bear: The Rampage Continues, or even Alien vs. Predator vs. Cocaine Bear.
The funny thing is, you could probably make a series of those films that are just based on a simple equation — drug plus animal equals a good idea. Meth Raccoon, Ketamine Kangaroo, and Heroin Hippo are all solid ideas for spinoffs. Who knows? They could even team up to fight poachers together in an Animal Avengers. Of course, that probably wouldn’t happen, but that didn’t stop The Asylum from making Attack of the Meth Gator, because every masterpiece has its cheap copy.
The one shining light of hope we have is that the writer of the film, Jimmy Warden, spoke in an interview with Movieweb, and said that he is “not done with the Cocaine Bear saga yet.” So it seems like he does not want to move away from the central bear of it all. This might lead more credence to the first path we mentioned, even though the others would hold some water as well. We will ultimately have to wait and see if a sequel or spinoff is confirmed.
You can see Cocaine Bear while it is in theaters now.
