Elizabeth Banks’ next movie takes a crack at sweet, sweet bear revenge.
If you ever wondered what distinguishes a good old American Black Bear from a coke-high American Black Bear, Cocaine Bear has you covered! The upcoming black comedy by actor-director Elizabeth Banks is inspired by a true event that happened in 1985, where a bear ingested a bag full of cocaine and goes on a rampage in a small town. The movie will follow an eccentric gathering of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers assemble in a Georgia forest as the bear goes wild!
A new clip posted on the official Twitter account of the movie showcases how dangerous a high bear can be. It notes the qualities of a regular American black bear that can smell up to a mile away, climb at the speed of 4 feet per second, and has a top speed of 30 miles per hour. However, the titular cocaine-induced bear can “smell everything, his climbing speed increases to 100 feet per second as well as his top speed is increased up to 75 miles per hour.” This basically means if you’re in the surrounding of such a bear, you are, simply put, messed up! The shots intercut with various glimpses from the movie featuring reactions of some tourists, authorities, and townsfolk.
Banks previously revealed that after reading scribe Jimmy Warden’s script, she did a deep dive into America’s crack epidemic and its war on drugs in the ’80s and felt that “this bear was collateral damage [in] a broken war on drugs. I had a lot of empathy for it. I felt like this film could be the bear’s revenge story.” While being a black comedy the movie has underlying themes of the country’s war on drugs, as well as about nature itself, implying that “if you fu** with nature, nature will fu** with you.”
