| Cocaine Bear | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Elizabeth Banks |
| Written by | Jimmy Warden |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | John Guleserian |
| Edited by | Joel Negron |
| Music by | Mark Mothersbaugh |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 95 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30–35 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $90 million[4][5] |
Cocaine Bear (released asCrazy Bear in some countries) is a 2023 Americanblack comedy[6]horror film directed byElizabeth Banks and written by Jimmy Warden.[7] It is loosely inspired by the true story of the "Cocaine Bear", anAmerican black bear that ingested several kilograms of a bag containing about 75 lb (34 kg) of lostcocaine.[8] The film starsKeri Russell,O'Shea Jackson Jr.,Christian Convery,Alden Ehrenreich,Brooklynn Prince,Isiah Whitlock Jr.,Margo Martindale,Jesse Tyler Ferguson, andRay Liotta, the last of whom died in May 2022, and to whom the film is dedicated.[9]
Cocaine Bear was released in the United States on February 24, 2023, byUniversal Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed more than $90 million against a production budget of $30–35 million.
In 1985,drug smugglerAndrew C. Thornton II drops a shipment ofcocaine from his plane. He attempts to parachute out with a drug-filled duffel bag, but knocks himself unconscious on the doorframe and falls to his death. His body lands inKnoxville, Tennessee, where he is identified by Bob, a local detective. He concludes that the cocaine is likely fromSt. Louisdrug kingpin Syd White, and the remainder is missing.
Meanwhile, in theChattahoochee–Oconee National Forest, anAmerican black bear eats some of the cocaine. Becoming highly aggressive, it attacks hikers Elsa and Olaf, killing the former.
In northeastGeorgia, middle schooler Dee Dee lives with her mother, nurse Sari. Dee Dee skips school with her best friend Henry in order to paint a picture of the falls in the forest. On the trail to the falls, they find a lost brick of cocaine and ingest some before being attacked by the bear.
Sari searches for the children with Liz, a park ranger, and Peter, a wildlife activist. In the forest, they find Henry clinging to a tree. The bear attacks, slashing Liz and sending Peter stumbling through a pile of cocaine in the process. The bear gets attracted to a cocaine-coated Peter and kills him. Sari and Henry flee deeper into the forest, and Liz calls for help.
Syd, his widowed son Eddie andfixer Daveed arrive in Georgia to recover the cocaine, as does Bob. At the forest station, Daveed gets into a fight with local delinquents Ponytail, Vest and Stache. After the three are beaten up, Stache takes Daveed and Eddie to recover some of the cocaine he stashed in a gazebo.
Liz arrives back at the station, pursued by the bear. She accidentally kills Ponytail, and the bear slaughters Vest. Paramedics Beth and Tom arrive and collect Liz after a brief skirmish with the bear. They leave with Liz in an ambulance, but the bear pursues and jumps into the vehicle. In the ensuing chaos, Tom is killed by the bear, while Liz falls out of the ambulance and is dragged to death on the road. Beth crashes the vehicle into a tree and flies through the windshield to her death.
Sari and Henry discover that Dee Dee left a trail of paint and follow it. Daveed and Eddie are taken to the gazebo, but when they encounter Bob there with the stashed duffel of cocaine, Bob wounds Daveed. The bear appears, but Bob distracts it with the bag of coke. Bob is suddenly shot fatally by Syd, who is under pressure from his superiors to retrieve the cocaine.
Sari and Henry find Olaf, who is mourning Elsa. He leads them to Dee Dee's hiding place in the bear's cave, which contains two cubs, revealing that the bear is a mother. Olaf leaves and is killed by the bear. Syd, Eddie, and Daveed find the cave, which leads out to a ledge behind the falls. When the bear returns to the cave, Sari, Henry, and Dee Dee jump into the water below, followed by Eddie and Daveed, who have chosen to quit the drug business, and they all survive. However, Syd refuses to leave the bag of cocaine found in the cave. He wounds the bear, but fails to kill it and isdisemboweled by the bear and her cubs.
Later, Stache hitchhikes to New York with a duffel bag of cocaine, while Eddie, accompanied by Daveed and Bob's dog, reunites with his son.
Allan Henry, a stunt performer and actor, played the role of the bear and is credited as "Bear Performer". He used custom-made, meter-long aluminum limb extensions to portray the bear's movements. While playing the bear, Henry did not have tracking markers on his face for animators to turn into digital muscle movements but provided a crucial reference point for the animators to create the bear's physicality and emotional state.[10]
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The film is loosely inspired by the events surrounding a 175-pound (79 kg) American black bear that died after ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine in December 1985. The cocaine had been dropped out of an airplane piloted byAndrew C. Thornton II, a former narcotics officer and convicted drug smuggler, because his plane was carrying too heavy a load. Thornton then jumped out of the plane with a faulty parachute and died. The bear, who died sometime after consuming the cocaine, was found three months later in northernGeorgia alongside 40 opened plastic containers of cocaine.[11][12] The bear is currently on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall inLexington, Kentucky,[13] which named the creature "Cocaine Bear" in 2015.[14]
The film's plot differs from real-life events in a number of ways. Notably, the real-life Cocaine Bear is not known to have killed anyone after consuming drugs, and what transpired in the time leading up to its death from overdose is unknown.[15][16] In an interview withVariety's Adam B. Vary, Banks stated that "this movie could be seen as that bear's revenge story."[17]
Prior to the film's release, the story behindCocaine Bear went viral on social media.[18] Yasmin Tayag ofThe Atlantic wrote that part of the film's popularity on social media may have been due to the appeal ofman versus nature narratives or the shock value of the premise. However, she noted that the bear was also presented in a sympathetic light by the film.[19]
In December 2019,Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were announced to be producing an untitled horror comedy project inspired by the true story, and based on aspec script written by Jimmy Warden. The producers approachedRadio Silence collectivesMatt Bettinelli-Olpin andTyler Gillett to direct, but both opted out of the film in favor of makingthe fifthScream installment.[7]
On March 9, 2021,Universal Pictures announced that the film was in development. It was also confirmed that the film would instead be directed byElizabeth Banks, and produced by Banks and Max Handelman forBrownstone Productions, who joined the producing team alongside Lord, Miller, Aditya Sood for Lord Miller Productions, andBrian Duffield.[20][21] The ensemble cast was revealed between July and August 2021.[22][23]
Principal photography took place inCounty Wicklow, Ireland, between August 20 and October 17, 2021.[24][25][26] The production budget was $30–35 million, with a large portion of it going toWētā FX to create the bear with CGI.[2][27]
In February 2022,Natalie Holt was reported to compose the film score.[28] However,Mark Mothersbaugh replaced her as composer in November 2022.[29] It marks his second collaboration with Banks afterPitch Perfect 2 (2015).
The film's trailer made use of the song "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" byMelle Mel.[30]
Cocaine Bear was theatrically released on February 24, 2023, by Universal Pictures.[31] The film is dedicated to Ray Liotta, who died on May 26, 2022.[32]
The film was released onpremium video on demand services two weeks after the theatrical release, on March 14, 2023.[33] It was followed by aBlu-ray andDVD release on April 18, 2023.[34]
Cocaine Bear grossed $64.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $25.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $90 million.[4][5]
In the United States and Canada,Cocaine Bear was released alongsideJesus Revolution and was initially projected to gross $15–20 million from 3,534 theaters in its opening weekend.[3] The film made $8.7 million on its first day, including $2 million from Thursday night previews.[35] It went on to debut to $23.1 million, finishing second behind holdoverAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.[36] The film finished in third place in its sophomore weekend with $11 million (dropping 54%), which was noted as a "very good hold" for a genre film.[37] In its third weekend, the film finished in fifth place with $6.2 million.
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 66% of 328 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "DespiteCocaine Bear's half-baked plot and uneven acting, the titular fur fiend's scene-snorting frenzy will give B-movie enthusiasts a contact high."[38]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 58 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[39] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled byPostTrak gave it an 80% positive score, with 67% saying they would definitely recommend it.[36]
Richard Roeper of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film 3/4 stars, describing it as a "wildly entertaining and darkly hilarious B-movie blood-fest" and "genuinely well-crafted horror."[40] In a same star review, ReelViews reviewerJames Berardinelli called it "95 minutes of escapist fare." Although he criticized the number of characters, subplots and pacing, he concluded that the film was "silly but not stupid."[41] Likewise,Christy Lemire ofRogerEbert.com criticized the characters but her review was also overall positive. She noted that the film was "not that profound." "But it is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks' insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd."[42]The Observer film criticMark Kermode rated the film 3/5, saying "It may not beGrizzly Man meetsScarface, but it leavesSnakes on a Plane standing on the runway."[43] In his review forThe New York Times,Jason Zinoman describesCocaine Bear as a blood-splattered major studio horror-comedy whose greatest joke is that it exists. He notes that the film consistently invites viewers to laugh at it and that it successfully captures the "comic potential of the gross-out". However, he suggests that the film's plot twists seem irrelevant and that its script becomes sentimentally dutiful at the end. Zinoman praises the bear's performance and a few raucous, transgressive moments, but he argues that the film's one-joke premise is stretched thin.[44]
Writing forCBC.ca, Eli Glasner found the film disappointing, writing: "Does the bear roar? Does it live up to the hype? Does it fulfil the potent promise of that amazing title? Technically yes, but there's a wide chasm between what the audience wantsCocaine Bear to be, and what it delivers."[45] In a negative review, Nicholas Barber ofthe BBC criticized the human characters and their interactions. He wrote, "Instead of showing us the moment when the title character discovered and ingested the drugs, the film keeps introducing more and more characters who could have been in the first draft of aCoen brothers script".[46]
At the2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards,Cocaine Bear was nominated forBest Villain (the bear).[47] The film won four categories at the 2023Golden Trailer Awards: "Higher" (Inside Job) for Best Comedy, "Digital Campaign" (Project X/AV) for Best Viral Campaign for a Feature Film, "Payoff" (AV Print) for Best Thriller Poster, and "Ursa Coca" (Inside Job) for Best Radio/Audio Spot (For a Feature Film or TV/Streaming Series).[48] It was also nominated for theOutstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production at the51st Annie Awards.[49]
Also released in 2023 was the documentary film "Cocaine Bear: The True Story" with Cocaine Bear's director Elizabeth Banks as one of its six executive producers[50][51].
Cocaine Bear inspired numerousmockbusters, includingMeth Gator andCrackcoon. A Japanese film titledKanizame Shakurabu was released beforeCocaine Bear, but was later retitledCocaine Shark to capitalize on the success ofCocaine Bear.[52][53]
Cocaine Bear is budgeted in the mid- to high-$30 million range, with most of the money going to Weta FX [...] to create the furry drug addict with CGI.