“The bear! It fucking did cocaine!”
Oh, I can’t wait for Cocaine Bear! The story is almost too crazy to be real. In 1985, Andrew Thornton lightened the load in his airplane by dumping out a cache of cocaine. Thornton eventually leaped to his death like an idiot, and the cocaine…well, a black bear found it and ingested it, only to be found dead three months later in Northern Georgia. That’s some powerful powder he got into there!
And now we have the movie based on that insane shit, Cocaine Bear, directed by Elizabeth Banks in her third feature behind the camera. The story is slightly different, with the coked-up bear going crazy and encountering a bunch of crooks, cops, idiot teens, and more.
The cast portraying these oddballs is led by a trio of Star Wars alums: Keri Russell (The Rise of Skywalker), O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story). Joining them are Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Kristofer Hivju, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Matthew Rhys, Margo Martindale, and comedian Scott Seiss whose workplace videos are hilarious. The film also marks one of the final performances by the late great Ray Liotta, doing what he does best by the looks of it.
Cocaine Bear opens in theaters on February 24th 2023!