Elizabeth Banks Says Her COCAINE BEAR Movie Is Like "The Bear's Revenge Story" With a Surprising Theme

Director Elizabeth Banks’s upcoming thriller, Cocaine Bear, looks like it’s going to be a wild ride. Based on the true story of a bear who happened upon 88 pounds of cocaine that were dumped from an airplane into the Georgia wilderness, this movie aims to depict what may have happened if the bear had survived the dosage and gone on a murderous rampage due to the ingested narcotic. What really happened is the poor thing just overdosed and died, but Banks likes to imagine what would have happened if things had gone another way.

In this month's issue of Total Film, Banks talked about her take on the story, and the themes explored in the film:

"Cocaine Bear is a horror comedy. There are a lot of horror tropes that we play with in the film. You know, it’s a bear high on cocaine attacking people! But it’s also a really fun character piece. It’s about a great group of people coming together who are very much in over their heads. Everybody is going after the drugs, and nobody realizes that the bear got there first.

"[Jimmy Warden’s script] was so unique, and I thought it really offered an opportunity for me to play on a genre that I hadn’t really considered before, and do something out of the box. My first reaction was ‘I gotta read the real story and understand how much of this is true’. Then I did a deep dive. I thought 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.

She went on:

"One of the surprising themes of the film is parenting. The film is very much about fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters, and protecting your cubs. That’s one of the things that drew me to it as a mom, this story of how to be the best version of a parent. The other [theme] is the sense that the war on drugs was really ramped up in the ’80s. This film takes place in 1985, which is the height of all these programmes to combat crack in America. So many of those policies went sideways, and this bear was collateral damage. Then the other thing is about nature itself. We, as humans, with our hubris, feel that we can control nature. [But] if you fuck with nature, nature will fuck with you.

"Cocaine Bear is super-entertaining. If you want to let go of everything in your life for 95 minutes, this is a great way to do that. It’s an incredible adventure. There are some really beautiful messages in it. It’s been fun to see people relate to the movie. It’s terrifying [when a film is finished and out of your hands]. That’s my horror movie right there. There’s only so much that I can control. All that being said, I’m really proud of [it]. I can sleep well at night knowing that I did my job well, and that if audiences want to see a movie called Cocaine Bear, I have delivered a film that lives up to the title."

I am really weird about animals in movies, so even though this cutie is going on a murderous rampage, I don’t want to see it hurt. I hope in this version, Cocaine Bear gets to run off into the sunset and live to adventure another day.

The real bear this is based on was taxidermied after his autopsy, and The Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall claims to have the bear’s stuffed remains on display, complete with a name tag offering the bear the nickname “Pablo EskoBear.”

In a blog, the mall says the bear passed through many hands before coming to Kentucky. The Georgia medical examiner who performed the bear’s autopsy contacted a taxidermist to stuff the bear, then donated it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Eventually the bear made its way to a pawnshop, where it was bought by country music star Waylon Jennings. The bear continued to exchange hands, traveling to Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, before eventually being bought by the mall, claims the blog.

The film features the late Ray Liotta in his last role before he passed away, as well as real life wife and husband actors Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who are reuniting with their The Americans co-star Margo Martindale. They are joined by O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery-Jennings, Alden Ehrenreich, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.